PREGNANCY RESULTS FROM A VIBRATOR APPLICATION, ELECTROEJACULATION, AND A VAS ASPIRATION PROGRAM IN SPINAL-CORD INJURED MEN

In an infertility treatment programme for spinal-cord injured men, vib rator application was primarily used in cases of upper motor neurone l esion and electroejaculation in men with lower lesions, or when vibrat or application failed to induce ejaculation. Spermatozoa were obtained by these methods from 29 out of 35 men who desired infertility treatm ent. No ejaculate was obtained from six men. Three of these men plus t wo others with very poor sperm quality with electroejaculation underwe nt microsurgical sperm aspiration from the vas deferens for in-vitro f ertilization (IVF), and spermatozoa were obtained from all of them. Th us it was possible to obtain spermatozoa from almost every spinal-cord injured man who had ongoing spermatogenesis using these three methods . Insemination was the primary infertility treatment used with all the couples where there was successful ejaculation. In all, 12 pregnancie s resulted from home vaginal inseminations, eight from intrauterine in seminations, two from IVF with ejaculated spermatozoa, and two from IV F with spermatozoa aspirated from the vas. Three couples had children from donor inseminations (not counted in the results); 12 are still in the programme. From 24 pregnancies, 22 children have now been born to 18 couples out of the original 35 (51%), and there were four abortion s. Hence, overall, infertility treatment of spinal-cord injured men ha s given good results.