Food for fecundity. A worthwhile trade?

HYANNIS (Cape Cod Online) - How about a free pizza with that vasectomy? That's the unusual deal being offered by Urology Associates of Cape Cod as a lighthearted way to raise awareness about the procedure and drum up business.

Call it a pie for the sterile guy.

And there's also a basketball tie-in. With March Madness — the NCAA basketball tournament — set to unfurl over the next few weeks, practice administrator Evan Cohen sees the vasectomy deal as a case of perfect timing.

Men need a few days of recovery after a vasectomy, so what could be better than hanging out on the couch, watching some hoops and chowing down a free pizza?

"It does actually come with one topping. Maybe you can put some meatballs on it," joked Cohen.

The practice has launched a zippy commercial video promoting the deal. In it, an attractive woman fiddles with a basketball while a female voice says, "Hey guys! Want to watch the college basketball tournament guilt-free?"

After dangling the free pizza offer, the voiceover artist goes for the sale. "You know you've been thinking about a vasectomy, anyway. Now's the time to get it done."

Cohen said March can be the busiest month for vasectomies for his company, with perhaps 45 to 60 being performed. He thinks it may be because it's a less busy time of year on Cape Cod.

Similar deals have been offered by urologists across the country in recent years.

Cohen hopes the pizza promotion — a pie from Surf's Up Pizza and Seafood in Sandwich — works as a fun invitation to consider the benefits of a procedure that he has successfully undergone himself.

"It's one of the easiest and less-stressful forms of birth control," said Dr. Evangelos Geraniotis, a urologist at the practice.

"We make two tiny punctures in the scrotum," Geraniotis said. "We find the little tube that carries sperm called the vas deferens. We take a piece of the tube out. We tie the ends off, we cauterize them, separate them. That way there will be no more sperm going through the track anymore."

An estimated 526,501 vasectomies were performed in the U.S. in 2002, a slight increase from previously available data, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And even though most do it for the permanency, some men choose to have their vasectomy procedures reversed.

"The reversal success rate in the first five years is in the 50 to 60 percent range," Geraniotis said.

At least you don't have to return the pizza if you have a change of heart.