Male Infertility Treatments

Approximately one third of infertility causes are due to male infertility. Most infertile men will be able to cause a pregnancy with medical help.

 

The prospect of being able to conceive one's genetically own child has increased considerably for men with male factor infertility. Now we are almost always able to use the husband/partner's sperm to fertilize eggs rather than recommending donor sperm insemination.

 

Please note that artificial insemination with the husband semen is not a treatment for male infertility and its pregnancy probability, when used for male infertility, is no higher than with intercourse.

 

Most men who are unable to cause a pregnancy through intercourse or artificial insemination do produce sperm. With few exceptions, these men will be able to fertilize their partner's eggs with In Vitro Fertilization or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI).

 

ICSI is a micromanipulation technique developed for patients with male factor infertility or patients whose infertility is unexplained. ICSI has allowed infertile men, who would not have been able to cause a pregnancy in the past, to father children.

 

ICSI is a very precise micromanipulation procedure in which a single live sperm is inserted directly into the center of an egg.

 

 

The ICSI procedure is recommended if your infertility history suggests the possibility of a male infertility significant enough to keep the eggs from being fertilized using regular laboratory methods. At Bay IVF Center, you will be scheduled for ICSI if any of the following applies:

1. The male partner has never caused a pregnancy.
2. In your prerequisite semen analysis or in the semen collected for your treatment, the total number of motile sperm in the whole ejaculate is less than 5 million.
3. In your prerequisite semen analysis or in the semen collected for your treatment, the percentage of morphologically normal sperm is less than 5%.
4. Less than three mature eggs were retrieved.
5. ICSI is always an integral part of Soft-IVF™ to maximize the probability of fertilization since the number of retrieved eggs is typically low.

The incidence of birth defects following ICSI is no higher than among patients needing any other infertility treatments (i.e., IVF). This observation is based on the experience of tens of thousands of babies born worldwide using ICSI.

 

For additional in-depth information, please see IVF Treatment Protocol, Pregnancy Probability, IVF Cost, and IVF Prerequisites.

 

If you have any questions regarding male infertility or to request an appointment, please contact us by phone at 650-322-0500, via email at care@BayIVF.com, or use the Contact Bay IVF Center form on this page.