When couples begin fertility testing at a clinic, one of the first things that the clinic will do is to do a sperm analysis on a sperm sample.  When doing this analysis they are looking for many things including sperm quantity and the motility and morphology of the sperm, also known as sperm quality.  Both the quantity and the quality of the sperm have a direct affect on the probably of achieving a pregnancy through natural means or fertility treatments.

Sperm quantity measures the number of sperm per milliliter of sperm.  Men whose sperm count measures 10 million sperm per milliliter or less have a significant less chance of achieving a pregnancy with their partner and are therefore considered to have male fertility problems.  If you are diagnosed with a low sperm count, your doctor will more than likely do more testing to see if they can discover what is causing the low sperm count.  Conditions such as vericoceles can cause low sperm count, but can be corrected with surgery.  Low sperm count can be a temporary condition.  This is why further testing is needed.

If the sperm are otherwise healthy, men with low sperm count are still good candidates for such fertility treatment as IVF.  After all, it only takes one sperm and one egg to create an embryo.  During IVF, the clinic can help the sperm penetrate the egg using the Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure.

Sperm quality is broken down into two categories.  These categories are motility and morphology.  Motility refers to how fast sperm move and what they look like when they swim, meaning can they swim in a straight line.  Men who have 60% or more sperm that move normally are not considered to have fertility problems.  If the sperm does not move in a straight line and/or moves slowly than it will have problems moving through the cervical mucous and penetrating the egg.  It could also indicate a genetic defect.  IVF procedures with ICSI have proven successful for sperm with poor motility.

Sperm morphology refers to the shape and structure of the sperm.  Sperm with poor morphology cannot fertilize the egg.  When 40% or more of the sperm has poor morphology, than the chances of achieving a pregnancy without assistance goes down.  Poor sperm morphology includes very small or large heads on the sperm, sperm with two heads, sperm with misshapen heads or sperm with tails that are kinked or curled.  Couples can still do IVF when there is poor sperm morphology, but ICSI will be necessary.  With ICSI, the doctor can choose sperm with the best morphology to inject into the egg.  Even when a majority of the sperm sample has poor morphology, the doctor may be able to find some usable sperm.

Unless the sperm analysis shows no sperm present at all, most clinics will suggest doing a procedure such as IVF with ICSI to achieve pregnancy.  Depending on the results of your sperm analysis they will be better able to discuss statistics and chances of success of various treatments.  If you know the results of your sperm analysis already, I would encourage you to do further researcher based on the numbers you have been given.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Fertility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.