What surgeries are performed to treat male infertility?

What surgeries are performed to treat male infertility?

Philip Werthman, FACS (Director, Center for Male Reproductive Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What therapies are available to improve male fertility?; What surgeries are performed to treat male infertility? and more...

There are a variety of different surgeries designed to treat male infertility, but they're based on, and broken down into, three different categories. Number one is the treatment of varicocele or varicose veins around the testicle, and there are several different procedures to block those veins; to block the abnormal blood flow and stop damage to the testicle, so that the testicle can make sperm that are in bigger quantities. The other type of surgery that is done for male infertility is microsurgery to relieve a blockage in either a man who has had a vasectomy and wants it reversed, or in someone who has a blockage either in their epididymis, or in their vas, from either an infection or other types of surgery. The last types of surgery that we do to treat male infertility are sperm retrieval techniques for men who have a condition called azoospermia, where we're able to go into the testicle or the epididymis and get the sperm directly out from there by doing a small, outpatient, microsurgical procedure. Those sperm are then used in combination with in vitro fertilisation and ICSI, where we take the sperm, and then we inject the sperm directly into an egg