The word oviduct means egg ducts.
Oviducts. The word oviduct means egg ducts. The oviducts are also commonly called the fallopian tubes. There are two oviducts, or tubes—one for each ovary. Primarily made of muscle, each of these tubes is about four inches long and about the same diameter as a small telephone cord.
These muscular oviducts are essential to the transport of the tiny immobile eggs from the ovaries. At the same time, the oviducts provide the meeting ground for the female egg and male sperm, which are coming to each other from opposite directions.
An egg coming from the ovary must first of all be caught by the oviduct. Neither oviduct is directly attached to its ovary. Instead, each oviduct has a trumpet-shaped widened opening near the ovary. This opening is rimmed with fingerlike fringes (fimbriae) that conduct a sweeping motion, which carries all before it into the oviduct. After the egg is taken into the opening of the oviduct by the sweeping fringe, waves of muscular contractions continue to aid its transport downstream toward the womb.
The trumpet-shaped opening of the oviduct leads to a passage that is no wider than this hyphen (-). This internal passage, about the size of the point of a pencil, is lined with minute clumps of brushlike hairs called cilia. The size of the cilia, in proportion to the egg, is like that of eyelashes in comparison to an orange. The cilia are the sweepers that help to keep the egg gently flowing toward the womb.
An infection, particularly a venereal infection, may block these fallopian tubes by scarring them on the inside. This may cause a woman to be unable to have children. Sometimes these obstructions can be removed by careful surgery. Tubal obstructions are seen by injecting a liquid that shows clearly on X rays as it flows through the os, or mouth, of the cervix, into the uterus, and through the tubes. This is called a salpingogram and can be done in a doctor’s office or in any hospital X-ray department on an outpatient basis. This procedure may cause some pain and discomfort, but nothing that is unbearable. It requires no anesthesia.
In performing sterilization for birth control, the surgeon usually double-ties each tube with silk thread and then removes a section of each of these oviducts or tubes. This requires the opening of the abdomen and is thus a major operation requiring a stay in the hospital. However, there is another method that does not require a woman to be hospitalized. Some physicians are able to do laparoscopic surgery in which a laparoscope—a small, lighted tube instrument—is passed through an incision in the area just below the navel.
Through another small incision in the lower abdomen, another instrument is inserted with which the surgeon is able to grasp and manipulate each oviduct. While he watches through the laparoscope, a loop of the oviduct is grasped and an electrocautery tip is used to burn and do away with about one or two inches of the mid portion of each oviduct. There are some other techniques used to close these oviducts. One of the simplest ones is to insert through the small lower abdominal incision an instrument with which the oviduct can be manipulated, grasped, and pulled up into a loop. A small circular elastic ring (similar to a small rubber band) is then slipped over the loop. The ring very tightly squeezes the oviduct closed in two places. At present the elastic-ring method probably offers the best possibility for success of surgery to reconstruct the tubes at a later time, if the woman decides she wants to have another baby. I would not, however, want to convey the idea that any operative sterilization method is reversible. An operation for sterilization should be considered permanent sterilization. Reconstruction surgery would be a very tedious and delicate major operation and would certainly cause some discomfort.
By describing these methods, I am merely explaining for you how and why certain techniques of birth control work. Whether or not you practice family planning is your decision and yours alone. However, every married couple is entitled to have information about each method of birth control, when making this decision. (For more information on family planning, see chapter 11.)
Posted in Understanding the Basics
To Ed Wheat Sr. and Gladys Gibson Wheat, whose commitment, devotion, warmth, generosity, and integrity stood for fifty years as a beautiful picture of genuine agape love.