To think male factor infertility is harder to treat than female factor infertility?

[Cherryblossom90]

Iv spend quite alot of time on the fertility forums on here and I also follow a few people's fertility journeys on social media. Based on that it seems most people only do a few rounds of Ivf and a few embryo transfers and hey bingo their pregnant. It always seems so quick to me (although I'm sure still horrificly stressful for the individuals!) and I always wondered if this is becuase it's female factor infertility being treated and more is know about this than male infertility maybe and therefore easier to treat maybe?

For background my DH had male factor infertility due to a traumatic accident when he was a teenager. We did 5 egg collections and 6 embryo transfers over 7 yrs when we were in our 20s before having success tg and our child. Now we are in our 30s and we will be trying for a sibling round of Ivf later this month. Obviously dreading it. So I'm back on the fertility forums trying to find support and just wondering if there's anyone else out there who is dealing with male factor infertility and finding it really hard to relate to alot of the Ivf stories on here.

If your partner has (I guess severe) male factor infertity due to cancer or trauma or surgery or whatever what is your experience?

Hey,
My partner has severe MFI, sperm less than 100! Recently had failed fertilisation and the consultant reckons it’s my eggs and not his sperm as as long as there are viable sperm, ICSI will overcome to low numbers/motility etc

x

Thanks for your reply @ivfjourneyandme I really want to hear other experiences with MFI. We haven't been told anything like this but how would someone know if it was the eggs rather than the sperm? I wish you much sucssess on your ivf journey!

I’d agree with you @Cherryblossom90. I think there are fewer things can be done for male factor so if they don’t work there’s nowhere to go so it’s harder to get around. We were told similar to @ivfjourneyandme that ICSI would be the answer to the sperm problem and after several unsuccessful rounds were told it must be the eggs. Our sperm numbers were even lower than yours. We then did surgical sperm retrieval and produced the best embryo we’ve ever had so I’m not sure ICSI alone was the answer. We also tried Artificial Oocyte Activation and our fertilisation rate improved. Good luck to you both.

Ours was male factor due to trauma (surgical error), and apart from the ordeal that was the surgical sperm retrieval (but our experience was very out of the ordinary) our first ICSI round went very well, they told us to expect a steep fertilisation drop off rate with surgically retrieved sperm, which ours's wasn't too bad, and by day 5 we had 2 useable embryos, one of which was successful.

I think where the infertility is just difficulty getting sperm A to B, such as nerve damage, obstruction, retrograde etc, then you are in with a pretty good shot. The most difficult male infertility to overcome I imagine is sperm production issues, so non obstructive azoospermia.

Thank you so much for your replies @Babybaby2025 @GreyZebra I'd never heard of Artificial Oocyte Activation. I just been googling it, I will ask about this at our next appointment as it looks like something that may help us. Thank you and best of luck.

Hi @Cherryblossom90 I’m not sure it helped but thought it was worth a try as we weren’t sure whether it was a sperm or egg quality issue. Sounds like you’re in a similar boat so probably worth a try for you too. It was a free add-on at our NHS clinic but since we’ve gone private we’ve had to pay but in the grand scheme of IVF it’s not particularly expensive.

My husband has obstructive azoospermia (a zero count) and had a successful PESA, and once that was done I felt that our situation was easier since in theory there are no known fertility issues on my side. I sort of assumed male fertility was easier to see change since they area always making sperm..

But the stats say the 'problem' is usually 1/3 male, 1/3 female, 1/3 both so I guess you could say the problem is equally tricky with both sexes!