Microdevice Assists with Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injections
Scientists at the University of Adelaide in Australia created a microdevice that helps embryologists perform intracytoplasmic sperm injections. The procedure involves injecting a single sperm cell into an egg to initiate fertilization, and it is a key component of fertility procedures such as in vitro fertilization. Typically, this procedure is performed by skilled and experienced embryologists, and it is fiddly and slow. This new device cradles up to ten eggs and holds them in position during the injection, making is easier and allowing for more reproducible results. For couples facing fertility issues, in vitro fertil...
Source: Medgadget - May 31, 2022 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Reproductive Medicine Source Type: blogs

Acoustic Wave Device Isolates High Quality Sperm for IVF
Researchers at Monash University in Australia have developed a microfluidic device to isolate high quality sperm from semen samples. The process could improve the chances of couples who opt for IVF to have children. The technology uses standing acoustic waves to separate sperm in clinically relevant numbers, and is faster, less labor-intensive, and not as damaging to sperm as current centrifugation and washing procedures. Approximately 1 in 6 couples can have trouble conceiving, with male infertility playing a role in about 30% of cases and a combination of male and female factors in roughly 50% of cases. For such coupl...
Source: Medgadget - December 8, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Reproductive Medicine monashuni Source Type: blogs

The teratozoospermia ( abnormal semen form) racket for "diagnosing " male factor infertility
A common racket we are seeing these days is for everysemen analysis test to be reported as havingteratozoospermia - the technical term for a large number of abnormal sperm forms/ shapes.The truth is that most lab technicians don't actually know how to check for sperm morphology properly.I suspect that they don't even bother to do this properly, and just report every semen sample as having a large number of abnormal forms to maximise their work load !After all, when the report is abnormal, the doctor can triumphantly point out to this abnormality, and claim that this is the reason for your infertility !The patient is very p...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - November 17, 2020 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

The abnormal sperm morphology racket for over-reporting teratozoospermia
One of the newest rackets we're seeing is that a lot of men are being reported as having male factor infertility due to abnormal sperm morphology - what is technically calledteratozoospermia.The irony is most lab technicians have no idea at all as to how to actually check for sperm morphology. There is aWHO Manual for Semen Analysis, which describes this process in great detail, but the vast majority of Indian labs don ’t follow these guidelines, because it is very time-consuming and needs a lot of expertise.To report sperm morphology properly, the sperm need to be stained , and the shape of each individual sperm ( for a...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - November 9, 2020 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

Why bypassing the tubes is so helpful when doing IVF
Since IVF basically allows us to bypass the fallopian tubes, it ’s obvious that it’s going to be helpful for treating patients with tubal factor infertility – those whose tubes are blocked or damaged .However, it ’s become invaluable for treating a much wider range of indications, and in fact it has become the treatment of last resort for all infertile couples , no matter what their diagnosis is.While IVF was first developed for those patients without functional fallopian tubes , it can be used for treating any couple , no matter what the cause of their infertility is.Thus, if a man has a low sperm count , or a zer...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - July 14, 2020 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

Infertility Injustice: Why We Need Better Options to Treat Male Factor Infertility
Reproduction is generally associated with women and consequently men’s reproductive is often neglected. One clear example of this is the discrepancy in female and male contraceptives. Women have over a dozen types of contraceptives, including hormonal, nonhormonal, barrier, and long-acting reversible contraceptives. In contrast, men have only 2 options: vasectomy and condoms. Men do not have hormonal methods, nor do they have long-acting reversible contraceptives, both of which tend to be the most effective and often the easiest to use (e.g. methods like the IUD you can “set and forget” for years). This d...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - December 16, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bioethics Today Tags: Health Care Justice Author: Campo-Engelstein Fertility reproductive medicine reproductive rights syndicated Women's Reproductive Rights Source Type: blogs

Why azoospermic men get poor quality treatment
One of the reason azoospermic men don't get good quality treatment in IVF clinics is because most IVF clinics don't have a full-time urologist / andrologist on their staff.This means they have to depend on an external consultant urologist to come and do the surgical procedures for sperm retrieval, such as PESA or a TESA. The problem is that often these andrologists are extremely busy , because they're traveling all over the place, which means they're often not available to do the procedure on the day of the egg pickup.This obviously affects the chances of the patient getting pregnant , because the clinic is then forced to ...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - September 8, 2019 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

The story of an embryo !
We retrieved 4 oocyte cumlus complexes from 4 follicles for this older woman with a very low AMH levelAll the 4 eggs were mature ( M2) and we did ICSI for all of themHowever, only 1 fertilisedThis divided well until Day 4, by which point it had formed a moruleHowever, the blastocyst on Day 5 was of poor qualityThis photo-essay emphasises how much biological variability there is in egg and embryo quality, which is why it is so hard for us to predict the outcome of any IVF cycle  (Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog)
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - May 18, 2019 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

Simplifying IVF !
I have found that patients are intimidated by the concept of IVF, and think of it as being a very complex treatment. This is also partly because doctors love adding a lot of medical jargon such as ICSI, PGT, blastocyst transfer and vitrification to the treatment. Perhaps this is also because they can charge an arm and a leg for it, because  the more complex patients think the treatment is , the more they can charge for it! However, the basics of IVF are very simple ! All we are doing is helping to kick-start a pregnancy , so that we imitate in the test tube in the IVF lab what would normally happen in the bedroom...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - January 28, 2019 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

Cross referrals between urologist and gynecologist for IUI treatment
Lots of patients with a low sperm count are seen by a gynecologist , who then advises them to do an IUI treatment because they don't have anything better to offer them.However, because their sperm count is poor, they refer the patient to an andrologist/ urologist .Many urologists are clueless about male infertility treatment , because they specialize in doing other things , such as removing prostates and treating kidney stones. This is why most of them aren't very interested in treating the infertile man, because they are primarily surgeons who like operating. And honest urologists know there is little they can offer ...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - January 20, 2019 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

When the sperm are a bottleneck for pregnancy
Men with a low sperm count can't get their wives pregnant in the bedroom. This is called male factor infertility, and the technical term for this is oligoastenospermia. This means that it ’s it's the low sperm count which is the bottleneck in the bedroom, and this is a common cause for infertility.Interestingly, the problem gets flipped when we move from the bedroom to the lab, because in-vivo is not the same as in-vitro.When we use IVF for treating these infertile couples, the bottleneck is no longer the sperm, because we do ICSI for them, where we inject a single sperm inside an egg. This means that no matter how ...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - December 21, 2018 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

August 2010 Man of the Month: E-Patient Dave
Richard Davies deBronkart Jr , known by many as e-Patient Dave, is a cancer patient and blogger who, in 2009, became a noted activist for health care transformation through participatory medicine and personal health data rights. In 2010, he became a published author and Disruptive Women in Health Care’s August Man of the Month. I was a middle-aged guy going through life, as involved with my own health care as I was with my car’s carburetor, which is to say, virtually not at all. And then I found out I was almost dead. That’s how my interview with Dave started. Dave was diagnosed in January 2007 with Stage IV, Grade 4...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - September 27, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Review of our first IVF cycle at Malpani Infertility Clinic
My husband and I went to a renowned mother-child hospital in the suburbs of Mumbai to seek fertility treatment since we had an issue of male factor infertility (low sperm count and morphology). As per the doctor ’s advice (which matched what we had read ourselves), we decided to go ahead with IVF-ICSI since this would the best suited for our condition since a single sperm would be injected into a single egg, thus dealing with the low sperm motility issue. The specialist told us that my husband could give sperm deposits which would be frozen and pooled along with a fresh sample for best chances of embryos developing. We m...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - August 29, 2018 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

IUI versus IVF versus ICSI
Many infertile men get extremely poor quality treatment, and this is because most IVF specialists have no idea how to treat them. This is why there is so much confusion as to whether the right treatment for the man with a low sperm count is IUI, IVF or ICSI - and the tragedy is that often doctors are as confused as patients.For one thing, most gynecologists aren't able to interpret a sperm test report properly; and to make matters worse, the quality control in sperm testing laboratories is pretty abysmal. Many labs still don ’t even know that a normal sperm count is more than 15 million – and they still print the ...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - July 28, 2018 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs

How confused IVF doctors mislead IVF patients
A patient sent me this emailI am 35year old  and my wife is 30yrs with type 2 DM,first IVF (ICSI) done 2yrs back under short protocol,got 7 eggs,in that they got three grade 1embryos,transferred all three but failed,second IVF done 6months later in other center under long protocol, got 16eggs,in that they got 12 grade one embryos, 2 transferred but failed, for next month they planned to transfer blastocyst out of 10 remaining embryos but only one morula they got,transferred morula but failed,during these days AMH was 4.5,my sperm motility was 20%,then dr told it could be because of egg factor and suggested for donor e...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - July 18, 2018 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs