Traditional Chinese Medicine offers a viable alternative or complement to conventional medical treatment for many conditions affecting male fertility.

At your first consultation we take a full case history and make a detailed diagnosis and treatment plan. Treatment is tailored to each individual, and acupuncture is usually given initially once per week for 6 weeks. Thereafter, acupuncture is given once or twice per month, while herbal medicine is prescribed on a monthly basis and modified as the presenting patient picture changes. As sperm take three months (12 weeks) to completely replicate themselves, The Fertility Support Company programme involves treatment for the same length of time.

In addition, at the beginning of treatment we will refer you to an independent laboratory which analyses the sperm within 45 minutes of collection (vital for an accurate reading, and often not analysed on the NHS until hours after collection). We also recommend that a further semen analysis is carried out at the end of the initial three month treatment period, when we would expect to see a significant improvement that would enable you to avoid the cost and trouble of ICSI or IVF treatment.

Needless to say, poor sperm results may have a significant impact on the outcome of therapeutic procedures such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, recent studies suggest that below normal sperm morphology appears to have less of an impact on the success of IUI. This is probably because of the number of sperm used to inseminate. The normal morphology score is, after all, a percentage of the total number of sperm. Because it is common to place tens of millions of sperm in the uterus when performing an IUI, the probability is that there are usually enough normally shaped sperm to achieve pregnancy.

IVF works on different parameters however. To compensate for when the normal morphology is between 4% and 14%, more sperm can be placed with each egg. This usually overcomes the problem, unless there is a concomitant problem with the sperm motility. However, when normal morphology falls below 4%, the problem can no longer be overcome by simply adding more sperm. In these cases, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is usually performed to ensure fertilization. This is not a guarantee of fertilisation though, since fewer embryos continue development to the blastocyst (a blastocyst is an embryo that has developed for five to seven days after fertilization) stage following ICSI with sperm from individuals with poor sperm morphology even when great care is taken to inject only normally shaped sperm.

Eggs are collected from the woman after hormonal treatment to stimulate the ovaries to produce extra eggs. A sample of sperm is obtained either by ejaculation of directly from the vas (The vas deferens is a narrow, muscular tube that connects the testicles (where sperm is produced) to the urethra.), epidydymis (A structure within the scrotum attached to the backside of the testis) or testes using sperm retrieval techniques.