ICSI (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection)
ICSI is an IVF procedure where human eggs are fertilized in-vitro. During ICSI, a single sperm is injected directly into the egg cytoplasm.
Generally, fertilization occurs when a male sperm attaches itself to the outer layer of egg and penetrate to the inside of the egg.
Sometimes due to some reasons, sperm do not able to penetrate outer layer of egg and becomes the reason for infertility. Hence, in such condition, ICSI method is used to fertilize egg to form embryo.
In ICSI, a single sperm with mostly normal morphology is selected and immobilized. After immobilization, the sperm is directly injected into the human egg cytoplasm.
How ICSI works?
- In the ICSI process, with the help of small injecting pipette, a single sperm is injected into the egg and kept into the incubator for fertilization. Once, the fertilization occurs, the embryos are observed for 1-5 days before it is transferred to the woman’s uterus.
However, there are two ways that an egg can be fertilized by IVF method; one is the traditional method and by ICSI method.
In the traditional method, mostly the semen with normal parameters is washed and processed, then more than 50,000 sperm are kept into the medium containing the human egg in the laboratory dish. After some hours, the fertilization is checked when one of the sperm enters into the egg cytoplasm
In both case, fertilization occurs and develop embryo.
When is ICSI Treatment recommeneded?
- If male sperm count is low which will not result in successful IVF
- If sperm motility is low from the normal.
- Blockage in the male reproductive system.
- If sperm have trouble to attach itself to the outer layer of the egg
- Unexplained infertility
- Sometimes, male sperm do not able to penetrate into egg cytoplasm in traditional method. This could be due to multiple reasons and causes infertility. Hence, by ICSI method, the chances of fertilization is increases slightly.