If you are desperate to have children, you do not have to remain childless. Thanks to Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (PICSI), you can still fulfill your dream of having a baby if the natural way doesn't work out.
You can find all the information and specialists here.
Even if couples decide to have a baby, it is sometimes not so easy to get pregnant. Sometimes stress or hormonal fluctuations are partly responsible for it not working out.
As soon as physical problems are the reason, artificial insemination can be useful.
PICSI (Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) is a modern procedure for selecting sperm that have reached a certain stage of maturity. Doctors sort out sperm with a defective chromosome count. The aim is to minimize the miscarriage rate.
If the desire to have children remains unfulfilled, it may be due to the quality of the sperm cells. The shape and motility of the sperm are just as important in the selection process as the state of maturity.
Physiological intracytoplasmic sperm injection is an extension of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). In ICSI, doctors inject the sperm directly into the egg cells.
In contrast to the ICSI procedure, in PICSI doctors use special hyaluronan-coated shells to which only mature sperm can bind. The reason: only they have a hyaluronan receptor on the sperm head.
It is also useful that hyaluronan is an essential component of the envelope that surrounds the egg cell (zona pellucida). For this reason, only mature sperm can bind to the hyaluronan of the egg cell envelope in the natural process. They then finally penetrate to the egg cell.
Artificial insemination under the microscope @ DAntes /AdobeStock
In principle, there are several methods of artificial fertilization. The various methods differ in how and where the sperm and egg cells meet:
In artificial insemination outside the body, a natural fusion of sperm and egg can take place in a dish.
It is also possible for doctors to inject the sperm directly into the cytoplasm of the egg cell using micromanipulation.
With insemination, on the other hand, doctors introduce the prepared sperm into the woman's uterus. The sperm fuses with the egg naturally in the woman's fallopian tube.
Many couples have surplus fertilized eggs frozen (cryopreservation). This is a kind of stockpile in case pregnancy does not occur the first time or if there is a desire to have another child.
The hormone therapy used in artificial insemination enables the maturation of several follicles in one cycle and controlled ovulation.
Promising medications include:
Statutory health insurance companies usually cover part of the costs, although couples usually have to pay 100 percent of the costs for the preliminary tests.
Statutory health insurance companies subsidize each procedure, whereby couples have to pay a co-payment. How high the costs are depends on the therapy and the number of artificial inseminations.
If sperm quality and/or sperm concentration is limited, doctors use the ICSI procedure. This involves injecting a sperm directly into the egg using micromanipulation.
IMSI (intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection) is an extension of ICSI, in which experts examine the sperm beforehand. The high magnification allows them to select normally shaped sperm without vacuoles (fluid-filled cavity) for injection.
PICSI (Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) is an extension of ICSI. Here, experts can specifically select mature sperm. This eliminates the risk of using sperm with an incorrect number of chromosomes.
Cryopreservation: if it doesn't work the first time
Pregnancy does not always occur on the first attempt at artificial insemination. Or even if a couple would like to have a sibling, it is possible to have surplus fertilized eggs frozen. This saves you having to undergo further stimulation and egg retrieval (follicular puncture). This method is called cryopreservation.
Cryopreservation allows women to store their eggs for later @ sola_sola /AdobeStock
It is not only suitable for couples who want to have children, but also for young women who want to store their eggs for later. In this case, we speak of "social freezing".
Cryopreservation is also suitable for men who are about to undergo therapy that damages germ cells (chemotherapy). They can create a "reserve" as a precaution in case they decide to undergo sterilization.
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