- So I'm gonna talk today about what happens
when you give a sperm collection on egg collection day.
Hello, my name's Imogen,
and I'm scientific director at TasIVF.
We prefer patients
to produce their specimen collection here.
It gives us some control over the temperature of the sample
and the environment that it's in,
and it also helps us
because we can prepare the sample as soon as we can
after the sample is produced.
So we get better results that way.
However, some people have difficulty
in producing a sample on site,
'cause you go from suddenly this being a really private
intimate moment with your partner
to having to produce and invite all these scientists
into your world to produce baby.
So we do have alternatives if that's the case.
So people can collect at home, people bring the sample in,
and drop it at the lab for us to process.
The other thing that can happen too
is that unable to produce a specimen on the day,
and if that happens, we can also have a few options.
If this is a potential issue,
we can freeze the sample beforehand and have you bring that,
and so that's already here on the day of egg collection,
or we can provide you with some Viagra or a special condom
which allows you to produce a sample while having sex.
Or at the very sort of last resort
is to do a testicular biopsy.
And so that's when we get a specimen
straight from the testicle.
You can go back and join your partner
and take them home for the day.
So the lab will take it from there.
So what happens is we get the sample in,
we do an identity check with you.
So when you hand the sample to us
we'll do an ID check with our RI witness software
which means that we'll actually apply a barcode
to the semen collection vessel.
And then that barcode will follow that vessel all the way
through the laboratory.
And it will only allow that sample to be matched
with your partner.
And if it's matched with anybody else,
we'll get a great big siren that says
these partners shouldn't be on the same stage together.
The lab will take the sample and we will actually remove
or separate the sperm from the rest of the sample.
So the rest is what we call seminal plasma.
So we separate the sperm out by centrifuging it.
So that's just spinning it really fast.
And we get the sperm at the bottom of the tube
and then we throw the rest of the sample away.
And then we just wash that sperm through some culture media
and we resuspend it at the right concentration.
So if we're doing IVF,
we need between one and 5 million sperm per ml
in order to fertilize the eggs.
But if we're doing ICSI,
which is when we inject a single sperm into the egg
we don't need nearly as many.
We can do that with less than 1 million per ml
all the way down to 0.1 million per ml.
And then in some cases we have so few sperm
that it's sort of, we don't count them.
It's just a plus plus plus sample or a plus sample.
And in those ones, it can take the scientist
a number of hours, depending on the number of sperm
that there are in the sample to actually to inject the eggs
with that sperm.
For IVF, we add the sperm to the dish with the eggs
and then the sperm just go about and do their thing.
We don't have to do anything more in the lab.
We just mix the sperm and the eggs together
and then we leave them overnight.
And the next day that's when we'll look for fertilization.
With ICSI, we actually have to physically inject a sperm
into an egg.
And when that happens,
that procedure can take quite a bit of time,
depending on how many eggs we have to inject.
But we anticipate two to three minutes
an egg for the injection.
When you first come and have your fertility investigated
by your fertility and specialist,
one of the key diagnostic tests that they will ask for
is a semen analysis.
And what we do in a semen analysis
is we assess the sperm for account.
And we see, so just the number of sperm that you've got.
Then we will look at the motility
which is how well they are swimming.
And also look at morphology,
which is how many abnormalities are there
in the sperm that we see.
And usually these are just structural order abnormalities.
They're not DNA abnormalities.
And the other thing is we look for antibodies to sperm.
So sometimes during life and the rigors of life we have,
there can be injury to the testicle.
And that means that you can actually develop antibodies
to your own sperm.
And if that happens, it causes them to stick together
which means that they don't swim very well
'cause they all clump together
and that's creates some difficulty in fertilizing the egg.
So from that semen analysis, we can see if IVF
or ICSI is gonna be suitable to fertilize those eggs.
So if you've got an count of less than 1 million,
we would suggest that ICSI
is gonna be a great option for you.
But sometimes we can actually increase the number of sperm
that we have by the processes in the lab laboratory,
which will mean that you can actually have IVF.
So sometimes the fertility specialist will say,
let's do IVF unless the lab tells us
that we haven't been able to prepare the samples well enough
to be able to make that possible.
And in that case, we will convert it to ICSI.
Thank you for watching.
I hope you found this information useful.
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