I am Dr. Matthew Zerden and I am the Medical Director of His Choice Vasectomy of Durham and Chapel Hill!
I am proud to offer one of the newest vasectomy procedures in the area: His Choice No Cut Vasectomy.
I am a Board Certified Obstetrics and Gynecology. I have a special interest in reproduction and I am a firm believer in vasectomy. Vasectomy is far easier and safer for men than is tubal ligation for women.
Getting a tubal ligation is a long process requiring multiple doctors visits, a trip to the hospital, general anesthesia, and more risky intra-abdominal surgery. In comparison, vasectomy is only a 15 minute office procedure done under local anesthesia.
Despite vasectomy being safer and easier, tubal ligation procedures are more commonly performed. Unfortunately, women shoulder most of the burden of having to prevent pregnancy.
I thought it important for my patients to understand why I became motivated to provide vasectomy services. More importantly, I thought choose to provide one of the newest vasectomy procedure available.
Why Dr Zerden provides vasectomy?
In 2009, I graduated from Harvard Medical School and moved to Durham to continue my medical training and grow my own family. Having lived in Chapel Hill as a child, I knew this was a special place, and I was eager to return. Now my family, I happily call this area home.
For the past 15 years, I have mainly been taking care of pregnant women, which included a 2 year fellowship in Complex Family Planning from UNC. That specialized training allowed me to be an expert in preventing pregnancies and in providing surgical sterilizations. Although most Ob/Gyns provide birth control and sterilization, my fellowship provided additional education and skill in providing these same services to women with very high risk medical conditions. During my training, I often wondered why male contraception and sterilization was completely overlooked.
Through my career’s work, I have had the privilege of delivering thousands of babies. I have also had the burden of witnessing the experiences of numerous families when pregnancies did not go as planned or caused significant health complications to the mother. Most pregnancies go well but most does not mean all.
I have cared for many patients who told me that they were done having children, but then their birth control failed, or female surgical sterilization was too expensive or too difficult to obtain – and they got pregnant again.
Unfortunately, I have seen women suffer serious complications as a result of birth control side effects. I have seen sterilization procedures that did not go as planned. Although it may be hard for some to understand, pregnancy can be a very high risk condition for some women. I have even witnessed some women die as a result of pregnancy complications.
I wanted to do more. I wanted to expand my knowledge and my services to help men who wanted to effectively control or limit their reproduction. Although scientific research has mostly focused on controlling women’s reproduction there are a large number of men who have the willingness to contribute to the effort to limit reproduction. Sadly both the number of options and the number of health care providers able to help men are far more limited when compared to women.
I want to help men when they decide they don’t want to have any more children, or no children at all.
Offering the newest vasectomy procedure available
I am excited to now offer a new way to permanently prevent pregnancies by providing on of the newest vasectomy procedures available: His Choice No Cut Vasectomy. The story on how I became a vasectomy provider is, in part, based upon my personal vasectomy experience.
For the first 20 years of my relationship with my wife, it was mainly her responsibility to prevent pregnancy. After our youngest child was born, I decided a vasectomy was a great option for us.
I went to see Dr. Monteith late on a Friday afternoon. I was amazed that 30 minutes later I drove myself home, After taking it easy for 48 hours, I was back to my regular routine by Monday – and without using any frozen peas!
The procedure was so simple, and it meant my wife didn’t have to take any more hormones or try other methods with had caused side effects or go through a more risky abdominal surgical procedure for a sterilization. In modern medicine today, we have many great options for female birth control, and this has been the primary focus of medicine. However, we also need accessible, simple, and no hassle options for vasectomy for men. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to learn from Dr. Monteith—the person who I trusted to do this procedure for me—to offer the newest vasectomy procedure here in the Durham and Chapel Hill area.
What makes a His Choice Vasectomy so great?
In the end a vasectomy procedure is a vasectomy procedure. A simple procedure designed to make it so you never get someone pregnant. Not all vasectomy procedures are alike.
Old-school vasectomy is also called traditional or conventional vasectomy. This requires the doctor to use a scalpel and make small incisions on each side of the scrotum. During conventional vasectomy a small section of each vas deferens is usually removed. Unfortunately patients usually have more pain with this type of vasectomy, a more difficult and prolonged recovery, and higher vasectomy failure rates.
His Choice No Cut Vasectomy is one of the newest vasectomy procedures. It is just as much a philosophy as it is an advancement in how vasectomy procedures are performed.
His Choice Vasectomy: The philosophy of vasectomy!
At His Choice Vasectomy, we do not discriminate against patients based on age, gender, or number of children.
Many vasectomy providers will only perform your vasectomy if you are a certain age. Some may not be as supportive depending on your gender. Many will be biased against you if you don’t have a certain minimum number of children.
At His Choice we only require you to be 21 years of age. We offer a supportive safe environment to have your vasectomy procedure and we dont require you have a minimum number of children. In fact, many of our patients dont have any children at all.
We also want to remove unnecessary barriers and make having a vasectomy easy.
One big way we do this is allow our patients to have single visit vasectomy procedures. Most doctors will require that you have two or three visits to complete your vasectomy.
His Choice Vasectomy: The science of vasectomy!
During a His Choice Vasectomy:
- NO needle is used to give anesthesia
- NO scalpel is used to make an opening
- NO thing is removed from your body
- NO ice or frozen peas are required
His Choice is one of the most minimally invasive forms of vasectomy. This is a no needle vasectomy and no scalpel vasectomy. No part of your anatomy is removed and the vasectomy is performed in such a way as to have one of the lowest failure rates.
With a His Choice vasectomy you will be back on your feet in 48 hours and you can be confident you have had one of the best and newest vasectomy procedures around!
