Testicular histology does not affect the clinical outcomes of ICSI in men with non-obstructive azoospermia / 中华男科学杂志

Objective@#To investigate whether testicular histology influences the clinical outcomes of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in men with non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA).@*METHODS@#We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data about 73 cases of NOA undergoing ICSI, including 105 ICSI cycles and 79 embryo transfer cycles. The infertility of the patients was attributed to male factors only or both male and female tube factors and the females' age was ≤38 years. Based on testicular histology, we divided the ICSI cycles into three groups: hypospermatogenesis (HS, n = 72), maturation arrest (MA, n = 21) and Sertoli cells only (SCO, n = 12). We recorded and analyzed the age of both the males and females, infertility duration, base follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) level, dose and days of gonadotropin (Gn) administration, estradiol (E2) and progesterone (P) levels on the day of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) administration, endometrial thickness, number of metaphase II (MII) oocytes, and rates of fertilization, transferrable embryos, high-quality embryos, clinical pregnancy, and abortion.@*RESULTS@#The rates of fertilization, failed fertilization, transferrable embryos, and high-quality embryos, and the average number of transferred embryos were 67.03% (553/825), 9.52% (10/105), 85.66% (472/551), 35.03% (193/551), and 2.10, respectively, resulting in 44 pregnancies (55.70%) and 42 live births (53.16%), with no birth defects. No statistically significant differences were observed among the HS, MA and SCO groups in the mean age of the men and women, infertility duration, base FSH level, Gn dose, Gn days, E2 and P levels on the hCG day, endometrial thickness, or number of MII oocytes, nor in the rates of fertilization (68.51% vs 64.39% vs 61.45%), transferrable embryos (85.05% vs 90.48% vs 83.05%), or high-quality embryos (33.09% vs 41.67% vs 38.98%). The rates of clinical pregnancy and embryo implantation were higher in the HS (60.00% and 37.61%) and SCO (62.50% and 50.00%) than in the MA group (37.50% and 21.21%), but with no statistically significant differences (P >0.05).@*CONCLUSIONS@#Once testicular sperm is retrieved, desirable clinical outcomes can be achieved in ICSI for NOA patients, which is not affected by testicular histopathology.

Testicular sperm cryopreservation for male fertility preservation / 中华男科学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the effectiveness of testicular sperm cryopreservation in male fertility preservation by evaluating the clinical outcome of ICSI cycles with frozen-thawed testicular sperm for azoospermia patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>We retrospectively analyzed 96 samples of cryopreserved testicular sperm obtained by testicular biopsy, vasovasostomy (V-V), vasoepididymostomy (V-E) , of which 55 were subjected to 60 ICSI cycles with frozen-thawed testicular sperm. We evaluated the rates of sperm recovery, fertilization, cleavage, transferable and good-quality embryos, clinical pregnancy, pregnancy outcome, and health of the newborns.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>All the frozen testicular sperm samples were recovered successfully. The rates of fertilization, 2PN fertilization, cleavage, available embryos and good-quality embryos were 77.6, 69.4, 99.4, 84.5 and 40.8%, respectively. There were transferable embryos in all cycles. Fresh embryos were transferred in 52 of the 60 cycles, with the clinical pregnancy rate of 57.7% (30/52), including 19 singletons and 11 twins, and the rates of implantation and miscarriage were 38.7% (41/106) and 3.33% (1/30). Up to the present time, there have been 20 healthy newborns, including 12 boys and 8 girls, and another 13 ongoing pregnancies. No birth defects have been found so far.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Desirable clinical outcomes can be obtained from ICSI cycles with frozen-thawed testicular sperm, and testicular sperm cryopreservation is an effective method of fertility preservation for azoospermia males.</p>

Clinical analysis of endoscopic ultrasonography in preoperative TNM staging of 126 gastric cancer cases / 中华消化杂志

Objective To evaluate the accuracy of endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in preoperative TNM staging of gastric cancer.Methods EUS and abdominal helical computed tomography (HCT) were performed one week before the surgery in 126 gastric cancer patients who would receive surgery to determine the depth of tumor invasion (T),lymph node metastasis (N) and distant metastasis (M) stage and which were also compared with pathologic TNM stage after surgery to evaluate the accuracy of EUS in TNM staging.Pairing x2 test was performed for data analysis.Results Compared with pathologic TNM stage after surgery,the accuracy of EUS in T1,T2,T3 and T4 staging of gastric cancer were 84.6％,14/18,82.0 ％ and 85.7％ respectively.The accuracy of EUSin N0,N1,N2 and N3 staging of gastric cancer were 74.2％,75.0％,57.9％ and 5/17 respectively.The accuracy of HCT in N0,N1,N2 and N3 staging of gastric cancer were 80.6％,75.0％,73.7％ and 12/17 respectively.The accuracy of EUS was similar to HCT in N0 and N1 stage.For N2 and N3 stage,HCT was obviously better than EUS (x2 =4.89,P=0.027; x2 =13.88,P＜0.01).The accuracy of EUS and HCT in M1 stage of gastric cancer were 36.4％ and 95.5％respectively,HCT was better than EUS in M1 determination (x2 =7.90,P=0.001).Conclusions The clinical application value of EUS in the preoperative gastric cancer T staging was high,however the accuracy in determining lymph node metastasis N2 and N3 staging and distant metastasis M staging should be improved.In order to acquire more accurate preoperative TNM stage to guide the treatment selection,the combination with HCT examination is necessary.