Evaluation of the Sperm Quality of Electroejaculate
摘要
Rectal probe electroejaculation has been routinely used as a semen recovery technique in 27 patients with anejaculatory problem from August 1990 to August 1992. Five had retarded (psychogenic) ejaculation; the remaining 22 subjects were men with spinal cord injury. The stimulator used was a Seagar Model 12 electroejaculator. After cessation of electrical stimulation, antegrade and retrograde semen specimens were collected. The evaluation of their characteristics included procedures to determine volume (graduated cyclinder), pH (Multiistix strip), sperm concentration and motility (using Computerized Assisted semen Analyzer (CASA)) and spermmorphology (light microscopy). Especially for the five samples obtained from patients with retarded ejaculation, simple sperm processing and assisted reproductive technology were done to solve their problems of long-term infertility. The result of the raw semen analysis of 22 patients with spinal cord injury revealed that the average sperm concentration was high and the sperm motility, especially forward progression, was essentilally low. In the original semen samples of the five patients with retarded ejaculation, the sperm count ranged from 5x1000000 to 123x1000000 /ml, with 2 t 40% motility. After a 40-minute swim-up procedure, the sperm count became 12x1000000 to 36x1000000 /ml in four samples, and the motility of sperm became 10 to 25%. To evaluate the viability of the sperm collected from electorejaculation, sperm culture was performed to observe the survival time (lifespan) of the sperm after ejaculation, in comparison with a normal control group. Both the viability and motility of the sperm in the electroejaculate group were much worse than those in the normal group. This might result in the poor conception rate when electroejaculate is used to do artificial reproductive technology.