Impact of the assessment of early cleavage in a single embryo transfer policy.

The policy of single embryo transfer (SET) adopted for women <36 years old since 1 July 2003, strongly calls for improvement of embryo selection. A total of 196 cycles in which SET was performed were randomly allocated to two groups. In the first group, early cleavage was assessed (ECA) 25 h after insemination.

Is there a future for spermatid injections?

Microinjection of spermatids into oocytes has proven to be a successful assisted reproduction procedure in the animal model. In the human, low fertilization and cleavage to the 4-cell stage were reported after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) with round spermatids. In comparison with a conventional ICSI-testicular sperm extraction (TESE) programme, the implantation rate after round spermatid injection is dramatically low.

[Medically assisted reproduction with immature spermatozoa. Clinical examination and surgical technics].

The authors report their experience with the use of spermatids in TESE programs where mature spermatozoa could not be isolated from testicular biopsies. The details of the indications for spermatid insemination, the technicity of the procedure and the results are exposed.

Intracytoplasmic injection of spermatids retrieved from testicular tissue: influence of testicular pathology, type of selected spermatids and oocyte activation.

Spermatid microinjection into oocytes has proven to be a successful assisted reproduction procedure in the animal model and in the human species, since in the latter a few full-term pregnancies were actually obtained. Patients entering our spermatid injection study included those with a total absence of spermatozoa in the testicular tissue notwithstanding previous positive biopsies (n = 29): an obstructive problem (n = 3), secretory azoospermia (n = 26), and those with total arrest at the spermatogenesis level in previous explorative biopsies (n = 15). In the latter group, absence of spermatids was recorded in four cases.