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(wz) A costly fertility treatment originally introduced for men with poor quality sperm is now the most popular form of IVF in Europe.
Doctors are concerned that the procedure, called intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is being used too often. One leading expert said he thought ICSI was being “pitched” to patients by competing private clinics.
ICSI, which involves injecting a sperm cell directly into an egg, is more complex and expensive than regular In-Vitro Fertilisation and carries a greater risk of passing male genetic defects on to offspring. It was first introduced in 1992 to treat infertility caused when a man had a very low sperm count, or his sperm was not active.
Professor Anders Nyboe Andersen, chairman of Eshre’s European IVF Monitoring Consortium, said the shift to ICSI could not be explained by more couples seeking help with male-related infertility.
“More than half of all ICSI cycles are now done in couples without a diagnosis of severe male factor infertility,” he told the annual meeting of Eshre in Barcelona.
“It is being used increasingly when couples are classified as having mixed causes of infertility, unexplained infertility, or because they are older - in their late 30s or early 40s.”
But Prof Nyboe Andersen stressed there was no evidence that ICSI achieved better pregnancy rates per embryo transfer than ordinary IVF. more…

From: »The Press Association«

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 08:00 by Werner Zapf and is filed under Exhibitions, General, Industry, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.