Spinal Cord Fertility
How CRH Can Help You
First and foremost,
we are a team of caring medical professionals dedicated to providing
you with the best in reproductive healthcare that medical science has
available. We conduct a state-of-the-art, comprehensive analysis
to diagnose and treat your fertility issues. One area where we
stand out from the crows is in treating patients with spinal cord
injuries. Obviously, spinal cord injuries (SCI) are of great
concern to the patient causing many challenges in his or her approach
to life. However, we believe that these patients can have
children and become great parents, active and involved in a child's
life.
We have found that
most SCI patients are males of parenting age. The injury brings
about impairment in erectile and ejaculatory dysfunction, from which
the patient will not usually "recover." This comes in contrast
to women SCI patients, who may have difficulty ovulating for about a
year after their injury. Here, however, recovery is fairly
consistent; most women recover and are able to conceive and bear
children.
For this reason, the
Center focuses on the challenges facing the male SCI patient. We
have developed a new approach in managing this lack of ejaculation.
Our procedures are much less invasive than most and are proving to be
very successful. In fact, we have one of the highest success
rates in infertility therapy in the nation.
How We Do It
The management of anejaculation in Spinal Cord
Injury patients is not new and some less invasive procedures have been
available during the last several years. However, the viable pregnancy
rates continue to be very low (as low as 10% per patient or 10% per
treatment action depending on the program). The reason for the low
success is the lack of adequate management of the male factor. The
male factor typically consists of oligoasthenozoospermia, decreased
normal morphology, failed sperm capacitation and lack of fertilization
and embryo cleavage.
At the Center, we use vibratory stimulation to produce an ejaculation in men
with spinal cord injuries. This is a less invasive technology,
especially when compared to the more traditional approaches of
electro-ejaculation and microsurgical sperm aspirations. A vibrator is
placed either on the base or the glans of the penis. The medical staff
carefully adjusts the displacement amplitude and vibration frequency
to maximize ejaculation based on the level and completeness of the
patient's spinal cord injury.
Following ejaculation, the specimen is examined
in our own fully licensed laboratories. Then the sperm are cryo-preserved
and stored in liquid nitrogen to avoid the need for additional induced
ejaculation. The sperm will then be used for the highly successful
fertility treatments already established at the Center.
For more detailed
information on vibratory stimulation, see
Penile Vibratory Stimulation (PVS).
How We Measure Up
Low success rates costs Spinal Cord Injury
patients large out of pocket expenses every year as infertility care
is not covered by insurance. Our philosophy of medical care is to
minimize the number of treatment actions per birth (presently is
1.2-2.0 treatments per birth in patients of all ages). The use of our
fully licensed and state-of-the-art laboratory in combination with
clinical assisted reproductive techniques maximizes outcome among our
patients.
Please review our
success rates. Several of
our patients with Spinal Cord Injury and male factor infertility are
included in these statistics.
To make an
appointment, please call us TODAY at
615-321-8899.
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