We live now in a world where we can get information at the drop of a hat. We only need to google our symptoms and we can try to diagnose and test our health.

At Fertility Solutions we generally advise you not to do this, especially as male infertility is so poorly understood and therefore seeking the correct advice is paramount.

Ordering yourself lots of medical tests on the internet will often create confusion and anxiety for you and your partner. Tests on the internet can also be over priced and often quite unnecessary.

We recommend that if you do consider yourself to have a male fertility issue you get properly, clinically assessed. This should be done by a consultant who specialises in male fertility who can lead and guide you through the process of improving and understanding your male fertility needs.

There are plenty of online blood test services that allow you to order all kinds of tests over the internet. However, the problem with this is that very few of these facilities offer a proper discussion of the results let alone a full clinical assessment and examination. This is crucial if you want to gain insight from the tests.

Self-treating, especially, in the area of male fertility almost always results in false diagnosis and increased anxiety in a situation that is already quite emotionally heightened. Even more so if you and your partner have been trying for longer than a year and have perhaps experienced unsuccessful IVF treatment.

We find a semen analysis is a good place to start and as long as you have a consultant to discuss the results with this can be very reassuring. At Fertility Solutions we always offer a discussion of results as standard as we feel it is very important if we are going to do a test to be able to support you clinically with the results afterwards.