Has anyone had success with high sperm DNA fragmentation?

[WanOvaryKenobi]

Hello,

After a pretty disastrous round of IVF with ICSI on the NHS we've paid privately for further testing and found that my husband's sperm has 45% DNA fragmentation. For context it's in the bottom tenth percentile.

He's 43, I'm 34 with PCOS but normal BMI and regular ovulatory cycles. We've been trying for four years and no pregnancies.

Has anyone else come across this issue, and been successful or otherwise? We are looking at going privately for one more round with additions, in the UK or abroad. I would love to hear your experiences.

Did they explain if there was any particular reason for the fragmentation? Is it anything he can work on with lifestyle changes? My partner was no doubt frying his sperm on scalding baths every week which impacted the next three months of fertility for us.

My dp has 2% morphology and had a varicocele. It’s highly likely he has very poor fragmentation but we were told there’s not much point in a fragmentation test as it changes every time and he already has good lifestyle factors so there’s nothing we can do to change it. We have a very poor blast conversion rate, despite very good quality day three embryos. Partner now does 12 hour abstinence before giving a sample so that the selection have had less time to be damaged. In our latest round we made a 4ab but that was a change of protocol too.