Pregnancy results from a vibrator application, electroejaculation, and a vas aspiration programme in spinal-cord...

In an infertility treatment programme for spinal-cord injured men, vibrator application was primarily used in cases of upper motor neurone lesion and electroejaculation in men with lower lesions, or when vibrator application failed to induce ejaculation. Spermatozoa were obtained by these methods from 29 out of 35 men who desired infertility treatment. No ejaculate was obtained from six men. Three of these men plus two others with very poor sperm quality with electroejaculation underwent micro-surgical sperm aspiration from the vas deferens for invitro fertilization (IVF), and spermatozoa were obtained from all of them. Thus it was possible to obtain spermatozoa from almost every spinal-cord injured man who had ongoing spermatogenesis using these three methods. Insemination was the primary infertility treatment used with all the couples where there was successful ejaculation. In all, 12 pregnancies resulted from home vaginal inseminations, eight from intrauterine inseminations, two from IVF with ejaculated spermatozoa, and two from IVF with spermatozoa aspirated from the vas. Three couples had children from donor inseminations (not counted in the results); 12 are still in the programme. From 24 pregnancies, 22 children have now been born to 18 couples out of the original 35 (51%), and there were four abortions. Hence, overall, infertility treatment of spinal-cord injured men has given good results.