Management of surgical working in an Italian neighborhood hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The novel SARS-CoV-2 pandemic arose in China in the late 2019 and soon after spread in the rest of the world. The management of SARS-CoV-2 is a serious challenge for all the healthcare professionals. The management of this disease has caused an epochal change in all of the hospitals.

Total quality improvement in the IVF laboratory: choosing indicators of quality.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a programme of total quality improvement (TQI) within the IVF laboratory and to provide specific examples of indicators that could be used in such a TQI programme. Although TQI is sometimes confused with quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA), there are major differences between the three quality plans: (i) QC is an activity designed to ensure that a specific element within the laboratory is functioning correctly; (ii) QA is a comprehensive programme designed to looks at a laboratory as a whole and to identify problems or errors that exist in an attempt to improve the entire process; (iii) TQI is also a comprehensive monitoring process designed not only to detect and eliminate problems, but also to enhance a laboratory's performance by exploring innovation and developing flexibility and effectiveness in all processes. Indicators used in a TQI plan should be objective, relevant to the laboratory, and measure a broad range of specific events or aspects of treatment that reflect the quality of care.

Outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection in azoospermic patients: stressing the liaison between the urologist and reproductive medicine specialist.

Objectives: To analyze the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles in infertile couples in whom the main diagnosis of infertility was azoospermia of obstructive and nonobstructive origin.

Methods: Eighty-three consecutive ICSI cycles were carried out with retrieved testicular or epididymal spermatozoa, 60 cycles in 32 patients with obstructive azoospermia and 23 cycles in 12 patients with nonobstructive azoospermia. Fifty-four testicular biopsies (testicular sperm extraction) and 18 epididymal aspirations (microepididymal sperm aspiration) were performed.

A prospective, randomized, double-blind study for the evaluation of assisted hatching in patients with advanced maternal age.

The objective of this study was to determine if assisted hatching improved the rates of implantation, clinical pregnancy and ongoing pregnancy for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) patients aged > or =36 years. On the day of oocyte aspiration, consenting patients were randomized according to whether all embryos underwent the hatching procedure (hatched; n = 41) or all embryos remained unhatched (controls; n = 48). Patients in both groups were treated with methylprednisolone and doxycycline starting on the day of oocyte retrieval and continuing for 4 days.

Effects of sperm viability on fertilization and embryo cleavage following intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

Purpose: In the human, intracytoplasmic sperm injection is typically performed using "viable" sperm which has been mechanically rendered nonmotile. The purpose of the present study was to determine the ability of nonviable sperm to fertilize human oocytes and the early developmental normalcy of the resulting embryos.

Methods: In this study, immature, prophase I oocytes from a total of 27 consenting patients were matured in vitro and then randomized into two groups: injection with a viable human sperm or injection with a sperm rendered nonviable by freeze-thawing in liquid nitrogen.