What Are Your Options for Male Infertility Treatment?
Male infertility has many causes and therefore there are equally as many treatments. Lifestyle changes can be initiated by couples at any point in their fertility journey without having to consult a clinician. It will never be a poor choice to improve diet, quitting smoking or drinking alcohol, and exercising more regularly. If couples note that they are not being successful in conceiving or maintaining a pregnancy, it will always be worthwhile seeking a fertility specialist. Although the WHO and NHS specify to try for 12 months before attending a specialist clinic, it is usually better to identify issues sooner rather than later. With advancing age, fertility decreases and therefore waiting longer to seek support will not help in the endeavour of getting pregnant.
Arranging an appointment with a Fertility Specialist may therefore be done after a year of trying to conceive when using the NHS route, or whenever the couple feels ready in the private sector. Initially, a few tests should be performed to get an idea of where the couple is at in their journey – this usually involves blood tests for hormone levels, including AMH, LH, FSH, Testosterone, ultrasounds of the pelvis, uterus and testicles with surrounding organs. The next step for men would be to have a semen analysis performed as this can provide information on the overall sperm quality (concentration, motility, morphology), but can also reveal essential information on infection or inflammation. Andrology or Urology specialists may then suggest various different treatments or further testing for these results.
For the laboratory, a specialist may suggest performing tests for infections, with either a microbiome test or semen culture. Should this find results outside the norm, the patient may be provided with an antibiotics prescription and further testing to exclude chronic inflammation. DNA Fragmentation may also be suggested, in particular when having a history of miscarriages or embryos fail to develop.
ICSI vs IVF for Male Infertility: Which is Better?
Depending on the outcome of any test, various treatment options are available. Preferably, lifestyle changes should be implemented and infections treated before resorting to assisted conception (IVF/ICSI). In addition, it is worthwhile investigating the cause of fertility issues, rather than circumventing these and by doing so, potentially passing on the issue instead of treating it. Should the cause be found to have arisen due to hormonal imbalances, hormone therapy can be proposed. Physical reasons, i.e. varicocele can be operated on by minimally invasive surgery. Should the patient be unable to ejaculate or have other anatomical abnormalities, sperm can be retrieved via sperm retrieval techniques such as MESE/TESE.
For almost 50 years, clinics have circumvented male fertility issues by using IVF or ICSI for patients with low motility or sperm concentrations. In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) describe techniques during which a sperm and egg are combined in a petri dish and therefore outside the body. Following hormone stimulation, oocytes are retrieved from the female and combined with the sperm. For IVF, semen samples with high concentration and motility are added to the prepared oocyte to support fertilisation. During ICSI, usually performed when sperm is present in severely low concentrations and/or low motility, a sperm is directly injected into the oocyte. One cannot claim for one method to be better than the other as long-term effects have not been established yet since it has only been implemented 47 years ago.
Contact Fertility Solutions to find out more.
