Around 1 in 100 men don’t have any sperm in their semen, which is known as azoospermia. If we’ve found that you don’t have any in yours, or that you’re producing a very low number of sperm, this could be because:
Even so, if your testicles are still producing sperm we might be able to collect some surgically – but surgical sperm retrieval won’t always be right for every patient. If you’re wondering if you need this treatment, talk to your consultant or contact CARE Fertility; they might recommend multiple ejaculation resuspension and centrifugation (MERC) first.
Surgical sperm retrieval is usually done under local anaesthetic or sedation with pain relief, and can be carried out in one of three ways.
If you’re suffering from a simple blockage the chance of recovering sperm by PESA, TESA or TESE is almost 90%, and with abnormalities of the testes there’s an average 50 to 60% chance.
After the surgery, we’ll usually let you know on the same day whether we’ve managed to find any sperm. In more complicated cases of TESE, however, we might need to incubate the tissue for a short time before we can recover any sperm.