SuperSperm - really??

Has your other half been told his sperm is great? SuperSperm is the term often handed out like smarties.

And yet that is so often not the case.

More often than not, there is work to do, but the guys are being reassured that any issues of infertility are nothing to do with them.

And that is often a falsehood.

And while there are men who want to hold on to the illusion of SuperSperm, there are far more who would welcome any chance to dive into male fertility issues and potentially make a real difference to the outcome.

A cursory glance at a comprehensive semen analysis will often show us that sperm is not great, and it will often indicate that further tests and investigations are warranted.

But the clinics don’t often share that info.

Sometimes they don’t actually show you the semen analysis results at all - just tell you that it all looked good and you don’t get to see the info they have found. Until you ask.

Sometimes an in-house test misses out some of the key parameters that might indicate there may be issues in place that could be having a significant impact on sperm health and male fertility. Often an IVF clinic will only look at what they need to look at from an IVF perspective - are there sperm, are some alive. That's all they need to know. They don't always look at a semen analysis with the intention of picking up indicators of a potentially fixable issue - too many clinics overlook or ignore indicators of infection, indicators of raised DNA fragmentation, indicators that suggest it would be worth checking for a varicocele . . .

I always insist on looking at the semen analysis results. Even if the male partner doesn't want to come into clinic to work with me. Even when there are significant issues on her side with hormones, endo, structural issues etc. I will still always want to look at the semen analysis results carefully. More often than not there are fertility issues on both sides for couples struggling with long term unexplained infertility. If the semen analysis is missing crucial bits of info, I will ask you to take another more comprehensive test. I work with women who are jumping through extraordinary hoops to try to get to hold her baby in her arms - it makes total sense to me to be super-thorough when assessing their partners sperm health too because better sperm health can make such a difference to outcome. Poor sperm health can impact fertilisation, embryo development and implantation and can raise the risk of early loss.

Frequently, far too frequently, we find men getting dealt a dodgy hand. If you’ve been told he has SuperSperm, consider getting a second opinion.