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For patients with subfertile semen, this procedure is prefered over IVF. Here, once the eggs and sperms have been collected they are processed on a special microscope using micromanipulators. A single sperm is loaaded in a special microinjection needle and injected into the oocyte on a preheated stage on the microscope. This procedure enables men with very poor sperm quality to have their own biological genetic offspring. Even for some azoospermic men (zero sperm count), sperm can be surgically retrieved from the epididymis (PESA) or testes (TESA) and used for ICSI. Thus very few azoospermic men need to resort to a sperm bank now with the availability of ICSI. After sperm injection into the egg, further culture and embryo transfer is as with the IVF cases. |
