Finding rare sperm cells in the semen requires unique expertise and many years of skill.
The MFC lab staff has a unique ability to locate rare sperm cells after long hours of searching and careful scanning of the semen using unique technologies, some of which have been developed at MFC.
The careful search enables the identification and detection of individual sperm cells in cases diagnosed as Azoospermia (absence of spermatozoa from the ejaculate) or an extreme low no. of sperm cells in routine semen analysis (cryptozoospermia/virtual azoospermia).
In over 45% of patients who did not have sperm found in the ejaculate in other sperm labs and were scheduled to perform an invasive procedure of finding sperm in the testicle(TESE), to the delight of those patients, the MFC lab staff successfully found sperm cells in the ejaculate.
This is due to the combination of the accumulated professional experience of the lab staff and the unique technologies developed at MFC.
This saves those patients from performing an invasive procedure to locate the rare sperm cells in the testicle (TESE).
The sperm cells which were found during the extended search, are frozen in a unique carrier "SpermVD" developed at MFC Global (a sister company). These cells are used as a backup on a woman's ovum pick up day.
That is, if on the day of ovum pick up no sperm were found in the fresh ejaculate for injection into the eggs or an insufficient number of cells were found correspondingly to the number of available oocytes, then the cells that have been frozen for backup will be thawed and injected into the eggs.
It should be emphasized that due to the Breakthru freezing technology developed in MFC, only the amount of cells required for their injection into the available eggs will be thawed and the rest will be used in the future for additional IVF cycles.
The Extended search and injecting the rare sperm that was found into an egg is a breakthrough procedure that has been published in the professional journal Fertility & Sterility.
(Miller N(PI), Biron-Shental T(C), Pasternak Y(C), Belenky M(C), Shefi S(C), Itsykson P(C), Berkovitz A(PI)). Fertil Steril. 2017 Jun;107(6):1305-1311
This procedure enables maximum fertility preservation to men diagnosed as azoospermia or cryptozoospermia/virtual azoospermia.
The lab staff also has the ability to detect vitality and motility in sperm cells that have been found to be not vital/motile in a routine semen analysis.
Looking at the sperm cells at a magnification of 6300 enables the identification of minimal movement of the sperm cells’ tails indicative of the cell vitality.