Do you want a baby someday but aren’t ready just yet? You’re probably building your career, still looking for the right partner, or enjoying some one-on-one time with your love before jumping onto the baby bandwagon. You’ve been told you have plenty of time – but do you really? “Of course I have plenty of time,” you’re probably thinking.

“The truth is, women only have a finite number of eggs, and those eggs disappear quickly. In fact, recent studies have shown that by age 30, women have lost 90 percent of their eggs.”

ICSI: which is pronounced ick-see, stands for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. ICSI may be used as part of an IVF treatment. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a specialized form of IVF that is used for the treatment of severe cases of male factor infertility.

ICSI involves the injection of a single sperm directly into a mature egg. Once the eggs are retrieved, an embryologist will place the eggs in a special culture and be using a microscope and tiny needle, a single sperm will be injected into an egg. This will be done for each egg retrieved.

• A very fine delicate needle is carefully inserted through the zona (the shell of the egg) and into the center (cytoplasm) of the egg.
• The sperm is injected into the cytoplasm and the needle is removed.
• The eggs are checked the next morning for evidence of normal fertilization.

Precautions after an ICSI treatment

• Heavy exercise like aerobics, jogging, and weight lifting are prohibited.
• Smoking or consumption of alcohol should also be avoided.
• Please consult your doctor before taking any medication.

at times an IVF procedure might be combined with an ICSI procedure. Hence if your doctor recommends this procedure it helps to have a clear understanding of why is this procedure required and how is it conducted.

CSI procedure is generally recommended when the male partner faces any of the under mentioned infertility conditions:

• Very Low or Zero Sperm count.
• The poor mobility of the sperm. This can be due to the abnormal shape of poor quality sperms.
• Ejaculation of the sperms is affected, either due to blockage of the tube that carries it to ejaculation or due to a back injury. In both these cases, the sperm production is not affected; however, their ejaculation is blocked, which makes them unavailable for fertilisation.
• The problem with erection or ejaculation. In case these problems are irreversible, then a doctor might recommend ICSI. For psychological of infection based issues, 1st line of treatment is to treat the cause. In cases of back injury, diabetes, or certain other condition which hamper the erection or ejaculation irreversibly, then ICSI is recommended.

This sperm retrieval procedure might be conducted before the egg retrieval to ensure that the sperms are available at the right time. The sperms collected before are frozen and stored for using them at the time of fertilization procedure.

Once both the egg and the sperm are in place, the doctors will then isolate one sperm, and inject it into 1 of the retrieved eggs. After this, the same procedure as IVF is followed again. The eggs are monitored and then transfer into the uterus. Following which the patient is monitored for early signs of pregnancy.