Varicocele ICSI

[Rankin11]

Hello,

Currently having IVF because I have endometriosis and no tubes.

Partner has good SA apart from morph (4%) but he has a Grade 3 varicocele.

With hindsight this was probably a mistake, but we went ahead and did ICSI without DNA frag testing as clinic advised his incredibly high count meant it was unlikely an issue. We got several medium quality embyros, transferred the best one in a frozen transfer this week.

From DNA frag stories online I have convinced myself I won't get pregnant from any of these embyros or I will just miscarry because they have DNA damage.

Has anyone gone ahead with ICSI with varicocele without checking DNA frag or treating it and had success?

I'm miserable in this 2WW because I feel hopeless.

Thanks

Hi,

Yes my first round of ICSI my husband had high DNA fragrance but we still went ahead. That round resulted in my now 4 year old son. I have a friend whose husband also had varicocele and she also has a little boy. We were told that sometimes the egg can actually repair the damage.

Hope this gives you some hope, good luck x

Fragmentation not fragrance!*

Thank you - this has given me some hope!

This really made me laugh!

@magpie234 😂😂

Hey. I am in the same boat with the varicocele and morph sitch. He has since had an embolisation but we got 4 embryos from our round from before he had that done. First one failed to implant (fresh). Second one failed to survive the thaw (5% chance of this happening so by this point I was convinced the dna frag had f**ked it and none of them would thaw). Third one did survive the thaw (only graded 6/10 or 3BB) and I am currently 6 weeks pregnant. Not had a scan so finding it hard to believe I really am but hopefully all will be OK when I go to my clinic on Wednesday. I have such bad anxiety about this pregnancy not working out and a big part of that is knowing this embryo was made using pre-embolisation sperm. However, my husband ended up only doing a 2/3hr abstinence period as his first sample wasn’t good enough, so we’re hoping that meant less dna frag in the sample that was used. It is also true that to a point the egg can fix the dna damage in the sperm, but I’m 35 so mine won’t be top quality. Just trying to take each day at a time and hope for the best, but it’s really hard. I’m still pissed we were just written off as unexplained for so long and I had to push so hard to find out the likely cause of our infertility! Hoping to read more positive stories on this thread. Wishing you the very best of luck for your first embryo.

@SAbs86 Eau de DNA 😌

This is really encouraging - I have got everything crossed from you!

I think I saw a video somewhere where someone said Jonathan Ramsay told them that if you have several embryos from a round with fragmented sperm, the fragmentation won't be off the charts, and there could be 1 or 2 in that bunch that could work.

Good to hear that has been possibly the case in a real world scenario!

Good luck!

@Rankin11 I asked the man the myth the legend that very question myself about a month ago and he said the same thing. He was very positive about one of our embryos working. So fingers crossed it’s this one, for us both.