ICSI - Can It Treat Male Infertility?

ICSI stands for Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection. This was first developed by Van Steirteghem in Belgium in the year 1982. It is a procedure where the sperm is injected inside the cytoplasm of the ovum.

ICSI Intracytoplasmic sperm injection is a method used in IVF to deal with the male problem of defective sperm function. Here, the sperm produced by a male is not able to reach an egg as they are not motile enough and is thus injected into the oocyte to aid the process of fertilization.

ICSI is a specialised procedure where semen sample is collected from the male partner and the most motile sperm is hand-picked and injected into the cytoplasm of an ovum (collected from the female partner at the time of egg retrieval. This procedure is used in cases where the process of fertilization cannot take place naturally. Hence, failure of IVF, asthenospermia and severe oligospermia require ICSI but polyspermia is a case where there are a large number of sperms available and does not require ICSI.

ICSI (60-70%) is the most effective micromanipulation method that is used to deal with failed IVFs. The other methods like sub-zonal insemination (SUZI 30-40%), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT 27-30%) have comparatively lower success rates than ICSI.