Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)


Fertility Treatments

ICSI is another form of Assisted Reproductive Technique (ART) that is commonly used apart from the conventional IVF. The woman still needs to administer a series of hormonal injections to shut down the natural hormone production and another series of injections to stimulate her ovaries to produce more than one egg.

Instead of mixing the eggs with the sperm in a petri dish so that natural fertilization can take place, ICSI involves using a fine needle to inject a single immobilized sperm into the centre of a mature human egg. This techniques was developed in 1992 in Belgium and since then had assisted many couples with male factor infertility experience parenthood. ICSI is done on an inverted microscope coupled with microtools (for micromanipulation of sperm and eggs) and a warm stage. Good quality optics are required to view and choose the most viable sperm for fertilization. Those that can benefit from this technique are:-

  1. Male factor infertility
  2. Inability of the sperm to attach to the human eggs (IVF)
  3. Woman with very few mature eggs during egg retrieval
  4. Couples who had failed fertilization in IVF

Normal fertilized eggs achieved through ICSI will also be cultured for an additional two days before being replaced into the woman’s uterus.

ICSI needs the same meticulous attention to details in order to achieve high fertilization rate, in turn good embryo utilization rate. Successful results with ICSI can only be accomplished with dedication of concentration, effort and patience especially when using testicular spermatozoa for ICSI.


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