How bad is 0% morphology?

[Anonymous]

I was hoping that here were some ladies here that had a little more experience with all this medical stuff. I'm still so new to fertility treatment and it's a lot to absorb. So here's my story.... Maybe you guys have some insight into my chances.

I'm 26, with PCOS, TTC for 3 years, lost 35 lbs over 9 months, was about to start Clomid, then my RE wanted to do an SA on DH. The numbers came back, Count:46 mil(good), motility:63%(good), morphology:0%(bad???). These results were left on my voicemail, and I called the nurse back to get more information, but any question I asked she told me were "doctor questions". So I don't know what all this really means for my chances of getting pregnant.

Somebody please help me understand what all of this means. Dh has another SA in early July, then after the results, we will meet with the RE. I just want to be prepared for what comes next.

[Anonymous]

0% mophology is the only problem that I see in your husband's SA. It means that 100% of his sperm is misshapen, thus might have a problem fertilizing an egg. In these instances, REs only advise to do an IVF. IUIs will be useless.

[Anonymous]

I also have PCOS and DH had low morphology (1%- so not quite as low as your DH's). We did 5 IUIs (one chemical pregnancy) and were advised, as PP said, to do IVF/ICSI. We chose not to and in the end, got pregnant quite by accident.

[Anonymous]

I believe a healthy sperm sample would only have about 14% motility, to give you something to compare to. I wonder if perhaps this sample just happened to not have any good sperm...

[Anonymous]

I think you will likely have to do IVF, although you do hear about these miracle cases where people get pregnant accidentally with low morphology. My husband had low morphology (2%) and it took us IVF to get pregnant. IUIs, clomid, etc. never worked. I haven't used birthcontrol in 5 years and I've only gotten pregnant twice, through IVF w/ ICSI.

0% doesn't mean you CAN NOT have children.

[Anonymous]

Try not too get too upset until you have had at least on repeat SA, and really you should analyses over at 3+ month period since that is how long it takes sperm to mature. This one could have been a fluke.

My husband has 1% morphology and there was nothing we were ever able to do to improve it. Eventually, we turned to IVF with ICSI and we have twins from that cycle. A year later we got pregnant with out treatment, but unfortunately, it ended in a miscarriage. All in all we tried for 6 years, both naturally, with IUIs and with IVF and they only thing that resulted in a term pregnancy was IVF. Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

we have 0-1% morphology (tested about 5 different times over 4 years) and we only conceived via IVF. I was 31-34 when TTC and had all normal testing.

We had success both times with IVF and now have 4 year old twins and a one year old. I kept waiting for a miracle natural pregnancy (because you do hear of it happening with very poor morphology) but it never happened to us. We had a total of 5 years of no birth control and spent much of that time actively timing sex to get pregnant.

I think it may come down to where the defects are on the sperm. Some men may have misshapen sperm but they are still able to fertilize an egg. Others (like my husband) may have defects that prevent natural fertilization. In our case, once fertilization was done via ICSI, the embryos were beautiful and they implanted without a problem.

Also, it truly only takes one. That one "lucky" sperm in a man with very poor morphology could randomly make it to the egg the first month of TTC or it may never make it despite years and years of trying.

[Anonymous]

19:36 here. As I mentioned, we're the miracle natural pregnancy with both low morphology and PCOS. My DH also went to a urologist for a 2nd opinion and that guy told him he didn't really think my husband had much of a problem and that he figured if we TTC for 2 years, we'd eventually get success. Our pregnancy happened when we were NOT TTC, but it was interesting the dr thought that. I'm sure he was wrong though...and I'm sure there really was something wrong with DH's sperm.

[Anonymous]

My dh has 2-3% morphology. The RE's love to say "big deal" but urologists always seem to think "no big deal". We have gotten pregnant three times without intervention - one mis and two successful outcomes.

[Anonymous]

My DH has 5% morphology with lowish numbers and good motility. I've only gotten pregnant with IVF (twice, one ended in miscarriage, one a wonderful DD). I'm trying for DC#2 now, on my second IVF cycle. I'm overseas this time (was in the DC the last time around) and the doctor here also tested for DNA fragmentation in the sperm and found it to be high. He recommended IVF/ICSI + microscopic sperm selection. Don't worry -- if you have to go down the IVF road you'll soon understand all of this! Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I've heard GW is notoriously bad at diagnosing morphology problems, so if you had it tested there, you may want to try a different clinic just to compare. My husband had 4% morphology, and we tried IUI unsuccessfully. Ended up conceiving naturally after 2.5 years (a miracle bc I'm 39). He also tried zinc supplements so that may have helped.

[Anonymous]

we had the same situation - we had to do IVF ICSI - worked on the first try and i have beautiful twins. my doctor advised us not to waste our limited funds on IUI, which we did try and didn't work for us.

[Anonymous]

You'll probably want to get another SA done at an RE's office using the Kruger scoring method: http://www.fertilitydr.com/male-infertility-semen-analysis-kruger.html

Anyway, my DH has less than 1% normal morphology and much worse count numbers than your DH - his counts have ranged from 5-20 million (as the urologist told us, the higher the counts the better because 1% normal out of 40 million is a lot different than 1% normal out of 5 million).

In the end, we have two children (got pregnant with the first naturally after about a year and a half of trying and the second is the result of our second IVF/ICSI).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You'll probably want to get another SA done at an RE's office using the Kruger scoring method: http://www.fertilitydr.com/male-infertility-semen-analysis-kruger.html

Anyway, my DH has less than 1% normal morphology and much worse count numbers than your DH - his counts have ranged from 5-20 million (as the urologist told us, the higher the counts the better because 1% normal out of 40 million is a lot different than 1% normal out of 5 million).

In the end, we have two children (got pregnant with the first naturally after about a year and a half of trying and the second is the result of our second IVF/ICSI).

They did use the Kruger scoring method when they did his SA. He's been taking GNC Mega Men Performance and Vitatlity (read somewhere it'll help). I'm hoping his next SA in 3 weeks is better so we can make a decision on what we're going to do, because now I feel like we're in limbo.

[Anonymous]

I am male and had an SA on July 3 that came back with 51 giga/L count, so my 4.5ml sample had 200+ million count, 64% total motility, BUT 0% morphology. I got the results in August, started taking Zinc, Vitamin E, Royal Jelly, Folic Acid, CoQ10, in additional to my regular multi-vitamin and fish oil. I also switched to boxers, I was tighty whitey most my life prior, and did acupuncture and moxabustion. My wife's period didn't come in Sept and 5 HPT came back positive. I will go for another SA just to see if morphology actually improved, or if we just got lucky. One of our family doctor's said the morphology isn't important because of my high count.

I think the thing to realize is that they don't look at the entire sample. According to this, they just look at 200 or so: http://www.gfmer.ch/Endo/PGC_network/Sperm_morphology.htm

And also their classification is slightly subjective and I don't think they really know which sperm can or cannot really fertilize an egg. They are just making educated guesses.