What is an "intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection" or "ICSI"?

What is an "intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection" or "ICSI"?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: How often do assisted reproductive technology treatments produce multiple children?; Are assisted reproductive technology treatments expensive? and more...

Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, abbreviated ICSI, or "ick-see" commonly, is the technique that is used to achieve fertilization in those couples in whom the male has sperm that are not capable of fertilizing the egg in a normal situation. So, in normal assisted reproductive technology, the sperm are simply added to the egg, and the assumption is that the sperm will swim around and then will fight it out and one of them will make it into the egg to achieve fertilization. But for some men, this is not the case. So their sperm are too few in number, or they're not strong enough, or they're not swimming well enough, and yet the head of the sperm contains perfectly normal chromosomes and can produce a perfectly normal offspring. So, in these conditions, the sperm is picked up, individually, one at a time, and then the sperm is actually injected directly into the egg. And because the egg consists mostly of cytoplasm, the ICSI procedure is called intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection--in other words, injection of the sperm directly into the substrate of the egg to help fertilization occur.