Effects of the hypo-osmotic swelling test on the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection for patients with only nonmotile spermatozoa available for injection: a prospective randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE

Hypo-osmotic swelling test (HOST) has been shown to be an effective method for the selection of live sperm. On-going pregnancies were obtained by using HOST-selected sperm. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of using HOST-selected "live" sperm versus nonselected sperm on the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection cycles when only nonmotile sperm were available for injection.

DESIGN

Prospective randomized study.

SETTING

Governmental tertiary care hospital.

PATIENT(S): Thirty ICSI cycles with no motile sperm were included in this study.

INTERVENTION(S): For the HOST group, potentially live spermatozoa detected by hypo-osmotic reaction of the tail were injected into oocytes. For the No-HOST group, the sperm were randomly injected into the oocytes without checking the viability.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): The fertilization, cleavage, embryo quality, pregnancy, and implantation rates were assessed for the two groups.

RESULT(S): Among 30 cycles, 15 fall into each group. Fertilization, cleavage rates, and the number of good quality embryos were similar between two groups.

CONCLUSION(S): HOST-selected live spermatozoa can be safely used for intracytoplasmic sperm injection to establish pregnancies. There is a tendency for higher pregnancy and implantation rates to result, but it does not reach statistical significance.