What is male infertility?
Infertility is defined as the inability of a couple to achieve spontaneous pregnancy within 1 year. It affects approximately 15% of couples, and up to half of those have a male factor contributing to their situation. There is a wide range of conditions that may cause male infertility including:
- anatomical
- genetic
- infectious
- hormonal causes
- no clear cause can be found in up to 40% of cases
What does an evaluation of male infertility involve?
Due to the high prevalence of a contributing male factor, both individuals in the couple should be thoroughly evaluated. Evaluation involves:
- a thorough medical history about your development and current health
- a physical exam
- blood and semen analyses
- some imaging studies
This information will be collated to try address the reversible factors that may be contributing to your infertility.
What treatment options exist?
As you can imagine, treatment is highly individualised to each couple based on a thorough evaluation. Management includes:
- advise on lifestyle changes
- hormonal optimisation
- addressing reversible factors such as a varicocele
- on occasion a minimally invasive procedure is required to attempt to harvest sperm directly from the testicle for use in IVF (eg. microsurgical testicular sperm extraction (mTESE)