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I have heard very mixed views about surgical treatment for vericoceles in men with very low sperm counts, with motility and morphology problems. Does anyone have feedback on the efficacy of treatment, and which ones were done? I have recently heard about something called the gat-goren method and want to know if anyone has experience with it in treating male infertility. Thanks!
i don't know much about it other than my husband enquired about it and the doctor examined him and said he could go ahead with the treatment but the doc stated he didn't think it would improve his very low sperm counts, with motility and morphology problems. My hubby never went through with it and hence we are now on our 3rd negative cycle. I would be very interested in anyone else that has been through this procedure.
My husband has a varicocele. Our FS suggested that his morphology, motility and count were all so bad that a repair probably wouldn't improve things enough to have any impact and that IVF with ICSI was really our only hope.
A urologist we consulted suggested embolisation over a surgical repair as it is less invasive with a quicker recovery time - but some quirk of DH's anatomy made it impossible for them to turn the right corners in his veins and they couldn't get to the varicocele in order to do anything with it.
At that point - considering my own fertility issues were also fairly significant, we elected to just continue with IVF/ICSI. We have a 15 month old child now, and two frozen embryos waiting so really aren't likely to do anything about the repair at all now, but in hindsight, even if a repair couldn't fix things to the point that natural conception was possible, I think I would get it done so as to get better quality sperm for IVF/ICSI. With our last cycle, we were only able to fertilise 3 of 12 eggs, I feel that we could have done better with better sperm, but we are happy with the family we have now - even if our two remaining embryos don't give us another child.
BW
Thanks for the replies. We have already gone through 2 unsuccessful ivf/icsi procedures and 4 fet, with 1 chemical pregnancy which was lost at 2 weeks, the drs blamed it on the low quality of the embryos from bad/ unhealthy sperm. We decided to do the surgery for my husband now as it takes 3-6 months to see results, and not to do aything in the meantime. We opted for the angioplasty option and were hoping they could get to the vericoceles on both the right and left sides. They were able to fix the large vericocele on the left, but also, bc of anatomical structures, weren't able to pass into the right vein they needed. The dr advised us to wait and see what if any results we get, and only then consider going for the actually surgery, I dont think we will, even if we dont get good results. Just a few words for people considering doing the angioplasty procedure- it is long, and your dh is left awake during the whole procedure, my husband said he could feel the catheter moving in his body, and at some points he felt a lot of pressure and some discomfort. The dr said this is very rare. He was told he could resume activities of all sorts the next day, but dh was sore and he had a lot of discomfort around the area where the stint and chemicals had been inserted. Whats amazing about the surgery, is immediately after, the vericocele collapses, and if, like us, there had been a high grade vericocele, you couldnt feel it anymore1 We are hoping that it will help at least some of the sperm parameters and will keep everyone posted in a few months when we go back to check results. Thanks for all the info!