Clinical outcome of intracytoplasmic injection of spermatozoa morphologically selected under high magnification: a prospective randomized study

Abstract

Recent evidence shows that the selection of spermatozoa based on the analysis of morphology under high magnification (×6000) may have a positive impact on embryo development in cases with severe male factor infertility and/or previous implantation failures. The objective of this prospective randomized study was to compare the clinical outcome of 87 intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection (IMSI) cycles with 81 conventional intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles in an unselected infertile population. IMSI did not provide a significant improvement in the clinical outcome compared with ICSI although there were trends for higher implantation (28.9% versus 19.5%), clinical pregnancy (54.0% versus 44.4%) and live birth rates (43.7% versus 38.3%) in the IMSI group. However, severe male factor patients benefited from the IMSI procedure as shown by significantly higher implantation rates compared with their counterparts in the ICSI group (29.6% versus 15.2%, P = 0.01). These results suggest that IMSI may improve IVF success rates in a selected group of patients with male factor infertility. New technological developments enable the real time examination of motile spermatozoa with an inverted light microscope equipped with high-power differential interference contrast optics, enhanced by digital imaging. High magnification (over ×6000) provides the identification of spermatozoa with a normal nucleus and nuclear content. Intracytoplasmic injection of spermatozoa selected according to fine nuclear morphology under high magnification may improve the clinical outcome in cases with severe male factor infertility.