How We Select the Best Sperm Possible
The male factor of infertility is very often overlooked. Around 40-50% of all Infertility cases are due to Male Factor.
Generation Next Fertility is proud to offer PICSI as one of our lab services to help create the best quality embryo possible. Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (PICSI) is a procedure in which the sperm is selected based on its ability to bind to a hyaluronic acid plate.
The hyaluronan enzyme in the sperm allows mature sperm to bind to the hyaluronic acid, which is the material surrounding the egg.
During PICSI, sperm is added to a plate coated with hyaluronic acid. By selecting sperm that are bound to the plate, higher quality sperm can be chosen and injected into the egg by ICSI. This method provides the laboratory team with an additional criteria for sperm selection in addition to pure visual inspection.
When Do We Recommend PICSI?
At Generation Next Fertility, we typically recommend PICSI for:
- Previous failures (Even after ICSI)
- History of low embryo quality that is not related to poor egg quality
- Multiple miscarriages.
How is it different from ICSI?
ICSI is performed by injecting a single sperm into an egg in order to form an embryo.
PICSI, in contrast, allows the selection of sperm according to their attachment to a molecule similar to hyaluronic acid. The embryologist is not the one making the selection in PICSI. Only mature sperm, and therefore those with the greatest capacity to fertilize the egg, will join these molecules.
What are the benefits of PICSI?
The main advantage of the PICSI method is that it allows the selection of sperm in way that is entirely objective. The process occurs completely Independently of the embryologist’s opinion, unlike what happens in ICSI.
This means that the sperm are selected individually and have low fragmentation rates thus reducing the possibility of genetic alterations.
