Vasectomy and cardiovascular deaths in Korean men: a community-based case-control study
Chi, I.C.; Kong, S.K.; Wilkens, L.R.; Cho, A.J.; Siemens, A.J.; Meng, K.H.; Higgins, J.E.
International Journal of Epidemiology 19(4): 1113-1115
1990
ISSN/ISBN: 0300-5771 PMID: 2083998 DOI: 10.1093/ije/19.4.1113Document Number: 376994
Researchers compared data on 413 35-65 year old men who died between October 1982-September 1983 with data on 413 healthy 35-65 year old men. Both cases and controls were from Seoul, Pusan, or Incheon, South Korea. Interviewers spoke only to wives as proxies of the deceased. 36 cases and 26 controls had undergone a vasectomy, but none of their counterparts had undergone a vasectomy. This paired analysis revealed a statistically nonsignificant odds ratio (OR) of 1.38. The researchers then controlled for all confounding variables while conducting a multivariate analysis. They found the adjusted OR to be 1 for vasectomy. None of the 3 underlying causes of death ORs (cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, and hypertensive disease) different significantly from unity. The leading cause of death was stroke (71.4%). Just 7% died from ischemic heart disease. Limitations of the study included problematic diagnosis of underlying causes of death, heterogeneous cardiovascular deaths, and the lack of distinction between thrombotic or hemorrhagic stroke, and small number of cases when stratified by length of exposure to vasectomy or by cause of death. Nevertheless, like other epidemiologic studies, this community-based study did not find an association between cardiovascular deaths and vasectomy, even though animal research in the late 1970s-early 1980s found that vasectomy in monkeys brought on a progression of atherosclerosis.