Outcome of ICSI Cycles using Pentoxifylline or Theophylline to Identify Viable Spermatozoa in Patients with all Immotile Spermatozoa

Sperm motility is an important parameter for success in intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment. The sperm motility is due to its tail. If the sperm is not moving, it could be dead or alive. Normal live births have been obtained after ICSI with immotile sperm [1,2]. Various procedures have been applied to pick viable sperm for ICSI including, hypo-osmotic swelling (HOS) test [3], addition of pentoxifylline [4], theophylline [5] or papaverine [6], laser-assisted selection, sperm tail flexibility test [7-9] and platelet activation factor [10]. The choice of method depends on type of sperm sample, availability of the material or equipment and preference of the embryology laboratory. Regardless of which method is employed, it results in higher fertilization rates and higher pregnancy rates in the difficult patient groups with asthenozoospermia or immotile testicular spermatozoa [7].