Introduction:
IMSI is an innovative, not invasive method. It obtains the optimal sperm in the ejaculate to perform ICSI. We wanted to evaluate how efficient is IMSI technique in patients with repeated IVF/ICSI failure of at least 3 cycles with no viable pregnancy and /or very poor sperm quality.
Study design and methods:
All couples that performed IMSI between the years 2007 - 2012 were collected retrospectively to our study.
Demographic data and clinical outcome were recorded. The IMSI` were compared to previous non-IMSI treatments in terms of number of embryos, quality, number of embryo transferred and pregnancy outcome.
Main results:
42 couples with male infertility were included (total of 90 treatments) and were divided into 2 subgroups: Conventional IVF-ICSI (control) treatment and IMSI treatment. Basic characteristics of the groups were comparable. Fertilization rate and cleavage rate were equivalent. However, the embryos quality showed a trend towards more poorer quality (grade 3-5) embryos in the control group compare to IMSI and respectively, a trend towards superior quality (grade 1-2) embryos in the IMSI group (60% vs. 47%; P=0.07 and 40% vs. 53%; P=0.07 ). Implantation, clinical pregnancy rates were significantly better in IMSI group (7.8% vs. 19.2%; P=0.042 and 10.5% vs. 39.1%; P=0.032). Miscarriage rate was significantly higher in control group (100% vs. 20%; P=0.032) and live birth rate was significantly higher in IMSI group (0 vs. 32.6%; P=0.03)
Conclusion: The outcome of IMSI resulted in a higher implantation rate, pregnancy rate and most importantly delivery rate.
