ACCURACY OF SEMEN COUNTING CHAMBERS AS DETERMINED BY THE USE OF LATEXBEADS

Objective: To assess the accuracy of the Hemacytometer (Hausser Scient ific, Horsham,PA), Mailer (Sefi-Medical Instrument, Haifa, Israel), Ce ll-VU (Millennium Sciences Inc., New York, NY), and Micro-Cell chamber s (Conception Technologies, San Diego, CA) counting chambers. Design: A solution containing a known concentration of latex beads was used as the standard to perform counts on the four different counting chamber s. Main Outcome Measures: Bead counts for the four different chambers were compared with the bead counts of the standard solution. Variabili ty within chambers also was determined. Results: Mean bead concentrati ons for both the Cell-VU and Micro-Cell chambers were consistently sim ilar to the head concentration of the standard solution. Both the hema cytometer and the Makler chambers overestimated the actual bead concen tration of the standard solution by as much as 50% and revealed signif icant interchamber variability. Conclusions: Our data revealed marked differences in the accuracy and reliability of the different counting chambers tested and emphasized the need for standardization and qualit y control of laboratory procedures.