Arizona Andrology Laboratory and CryoBank: Pellet Count

Arizona Andrology Laboratory & Cryobank

Providing state-of-the-art male fertility testing, processing, cryopreservation, and storage

Gateway Wellness Center - 850 N. Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85710

Phone: 520-885-2689 - Fax: 520-731-0715

Pellet Count

With ART procedures such as ICSI requiring only a few sperm for potential fertility, it is often desirably to quantify as best as possible the number of sperm in a patient sample that presents itself as either severely oligozoospermic or possibly azoospermic under standard analysis techniques. A standard pellet is achieved by centrifugation of the specimen in the same manner as a Complete Semen Analysis. However, rather than examine a set number of HPF’s, the entire pellet on the slide is methodically examined under high power and each sperm seen is recorded along with its motility. An average forward progression is recorded as well, if any motile sperm are present. The pellet count can be extremely useful for samples that have sperm densities too low to count or detect by normal methods. The Pellet Count can provide a good estimation of the number of sperm that can be recovered from the specimen for such advanced procedures as ICSI.

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