ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection)
ICSI is a very effective method to fertilize eggs in the IVF lab after they have been aspirated from the female. Its main use is for significant male infertility cases
Indications for ICSI
- Severe male factor infertility that do not want donor sperm insemination.
- Couples with infertility with:
- o Sperm concentrations of less than 15-20 million per milliliter
o Low sperm motility – less than 35%
o Very poor sperm morphology (subjective – specific cutoff value is debatable)
- o Sperm concentrations of less than 15-20 million per milliliter
- Having previous IVF with no fertilization – or a low rate of fertilization (low percentage of mature eggs that were normally fertilized)
- Sometimes it is used for couples that have a low yield of eggs at egg retrieval. In this scenario, ICSI is being used to try to get a higher percentage of eggs fertilized than with conventional insemination of the eggs (mixing eggs and sperm together).
What are the advantages of ICSI?
- ICSI may give you and your spouse a chance of conceiving your genetic child when other options are closed to you.
- If your spouse is too anxious to ejaculate on the day of egg collection for standard IVF, sperm can instead be extracted for ICSI.
- ICSI can also be used to help couples with unexplained infertility, though experts haven’t found that ICSI makes pregnancy any more likely than standard IVF.
- ICSI doesn’t appear to affect how children conceived via the procedure developmentally or physically.