ABSTRACT
Among married couples in Germany, 3-9% suffer from infertility. Due to the tremendous changes in reproductive medicine, several successful approaches including ICSI after operative sperm retrieval are available.The age of the woman has a positive predictive value for the ICSI outcome, but for the male partner no predictive value for any parameter before TESE and ICSI has been demonstrated. Therefore we investigated whether there is a parameter before TESE that will elucidate the question of success of assisted reproduction after successful sperm retrieval.The outcome of 108 married couples that were treated consecutively for infertility with one or more TESE were investigated to determine whether the man's age, FSH concentration or testicular volume has a significant influence on the success of this therapy. None of the parameters had a positive predictive value about the outcome that could enhance the counselling of these couples before operative sperm retrieval.
