ICSI
About ICSI – INTRACYTOPLASMIC SPERM INJECTION
Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
ART refers to treatments and procedures that aim to achieve pregnancy.
These complex procedures may be an option for people who have already gone through various infertility treatment options but who still have not achieved pregnancy. Discuss the options with your health care provider and consult a fertility specialist.
What is intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)?
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is an infertility treatment. It involves injecting live sperm into a person’s eggs in a laboratory. This procedure can create an embryo (fertilized egg). ICSI is a form of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Healthcare providers most commonly use ICSI when male infertility affects a person’s ability to conceive a child.
What does intracytoplasmic mean?
Intracytoplasmic (IN-truh-sahy-tuh-PLAZ-mik) refers to the fact that the sperm injection takes place inside an egg’s cytoplasm. This is the gel-like substance in the center of an egg, made up of water, salt and other molecules.
How is ICSI different from IVF?
ICSI is a type of IVF. With traditional IVF, your healthcare provider places thousands of sperm next to an egg on a laboratory dish. Whether one of the sperm penetrates the egg to fertilize it is left up to chance. If none of the sperm fertilize the egg, conception (also called fertilization) doesn’t occur.
ICSI promotes fertilization through the direct injection of a single sperm into a single egg. Still, ICSI doesn’t guarantee fertilization.
In both ICSI and traditional IVF, your healthcare provider implants the fertilized egg (embryo) into your uterus. Pregnancy occurs if the embryo attaches to the lining of your uterus.
Fertilization
A man provides a semen sample. If the sperm are healthy, they are centrifuged to concentrate them and reduce the volume, placed in a dish with the egg, and left overnight in an incubator. Fertilization usually occurs on its own. However, sometimes sperm are not able to fertilize the egg on their own. When this is the case, a single sperm is injected into an egg using a needle. This process is called intracytoplasmic (pronounced IN-truh-sahy-tuh-PLAZ-mick) sperm injection (ICSI). The pregnancy rate is about the same for IVF using natural fertilization or ICSI.
If sperm cannot fertilize the egg without assistance, couples should consider genetic testing. This testing can determine whether the sperm have chromosome problems that might cause development problems in the resulting embryos. Embryos that develop from IVF are placed into the uterus 1 to 6 days after retrieval.