Intracytoplasmic sperm injection: Three years after the birth of the first ICSI child.

Since the birth of Louise Brown 17 years ago, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has proven to be an efficient and safe procedure to alleviate long-standing infertility due to several aetiological causes such as tubal disease, idiopathic infertility and endometriosis. IVF is also useful in couples with
andrological infertility but the results are less successful with absent or very limited fertilization occurring after insemination with spermatozoa from a semen sample with impaired semen count, motility and morphology. Furthermore, a certain number of couples cannot be accepted for IVF when no spermatozoa are present in the ejaculate or when the number of morphologically normal and progressive motile spermatozoa is below a certain threshold number such as e.g. 500 000.