Low and Abnormal Semen Video
Understanding low sperm count and abnormal semen
Dr. Gleicher discusses abnormal semen and low semen count, and its effect on male infertility.
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Video Transcript
Title: Male Infertility: Sperm Issues.
Speaker: Dr. Norbert Gleicher, CHR Medical Director
What is Abnormal Semen?
"Abnormal semen means only one thing. That is, when we do a semen analysis some of the parameters come back abnormal. When we do a semen analysis we look at motility, we look at morphology, and we look at count. In other words, we look at how many sperm a male produces per ejaculate, how well those sperm move, and how normal the sperm heads are – that's the morphology. Sperm has only one function, which is to fertilize the egg. It is obviously not ethical to take sperm and run it against somebody's eggs [to test the sperm's function], so we cannot do that. We, therefore, do a semen analysis because once all three parameters are normal we can with 99% certainty can assume that the function is normal as well. In reverse if one or more of these three parameters are abnormal – depending on the degree – it will tell us what the likelihood is that the sperm's function is also abnormal."
What is Low Sperm Count?
"A low sperm count is defined by smaller than expected numbers of sperm in a single ejaculate. Most frequently, the exit for the sperm is occluded either from birth or sometimes during an infectious process it can scar up the exit tract. Or, sometimes a male simply does not produce any sperm in his testes, which is a much bigger problem. Fortunately, in most cases of azoospermia a male does produce sperm and if he does wherever that sperm is we can find it. Either we find it in the testes through a mildly invasive surgical procedure called TESE [which] we extract a small amounts of sperm from the testes of the male and then use that sperm IVF, or in cases where a male retrograde ejaculates this means that the sperm is produced in the testes but on the way towards ejaculation it's misdirected into the bladder rather than outwards. This happens sometimes with scar tissue. In those cases too we can usually find small amounts of sperm in the bladder, in the urine, extract it and use it for IVF. So, if sperm is produced we can usually track it down and can use it in IVF – successfully allowing those males [to become biological] fathers of their children. In roughly 85% of azoospermia – absence of sperm in ejaculate - we still find sperm somewhere. Enough to be successful in IVF."
Dr. Gleicher is Founder and Medical Director of Center for Human Reproduction, located in New York City. He has over 30 years of experience in the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. As a physician dedicated to both clinical care and research, he has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers in some of the most important medical journals, as well as wrote and edited a number of textbooks and are now classics. He has served on many editorial boards, and is a frequently invited speaker at medical conferences all over the world.
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Last Updated: May 9, 2012
