An increasingly popular choice of contraception.
Vasectomy, long marginal among French men, is increasingly practiced, shows a study published Monday by health authorities.
Between 2010 and 2022, “the number of vasectomies increased 15-fold,” write the authors of the study carried out jointly by Health Insurance and the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM).
It increased from 1,940 in 2010 to 30,288 vasectomies in 2022.
Vasectomy is a form of sterilization.
It consists of blocking the spermatozoa, via ligation of the ducts which transport them from the testicles.
It is considered definitive contraception because, although it is sometimes possible to reverse the effects of a vasectomy, we cannot know in advance whether it is irreversible or not.
0.15% of men affected
In France, where it has been authorized since 2001, vasectomy has long remained extremely rare, unlike countries like the United States or South Korea where it has become common practice among other methods of contraception.
However, according to data published this Monday, this choice has become a little less marginal among the French over the last decade.
Men having vasectomies are also “increasingly younger”, the average age increasing from 44 to 41 years between 2010 and 2022. And they “seemed to correspond to profiles of the most advantaged socio-economic levels”.
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Conversely, “the number of female sterilizations was halved between 2013 and 2022”, going “from 45,138 sterilizations in 2013 to 20,325 in 2022”, specify the researchers.
The authors of the study see this in part as the consequence of the affair of Essure implants, commonly used in France as a method of female sterilization before being withdrawn from the market at the end of the 2010s due to adverse effects.
However, although vasectomies are on the rise, they are starting from so low that their frequency remains low: around 0.15% of the men concerned - adults under the age of 70 - made this choice in 2022. Even if "the France seems to be gradually catching up (…), the levels still remain lower than those of the leading countries in terms of definitive contraception,” concludes the study.