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Efficiency of using frozen-thawed testicular sperm for multiple intracytoplasmic sperm injections
1Ladies Clinic Kyono, Furukawa, Miyagi, Japan. lckyono@olive.ocn.ne.jp
Purpose:
To compare fertilization and pregnancy rates of fresh and frozen-thawed testicular sperm injections (TESE-ICSI).
Methods:
Sperm collected from the testes of 28 azoospermic patients by an open testicular biopsy technique was used for initial ICSI or cryopreserved.
Results:
Fresh-sperm ICSI treatment (28 cycles) resulted in a 58.1% fertilization rate and a 32.1% clinical pregnancy rate per embryo transfer, while frozen-thawed sperm (24 subsequent cycles) had rates of 54.5 and 29.2%, respectively. The PR was lower using frozen-thawed sperm from nonobstructive azoospermia patients (9.1%) than from obstructive azoospermia patients (46.2%). PR declined to 0% upon the fourth ICSI attempt.
Conclusions:
Fertilization, embryo cleavage, and pregnancy rates were unaffected by fresh or frozen-thawed sperm use. A 57.1% cumulative clinical PR was achieved using the latter. The PR was significantly lower using frozen-thawed sperm from nonobstructive azoospermia patients than from obstructive azoospermia patients.