Blog

July 2010
CRM London is excited to announce the introduction of a new treatment known as ‘IMSI’ into its treatment range. IMSI, extended to mean ‘Intracytoplasmic Morphologically Selected Sperm Injection’, is a brand new treatment to be introduced into the UK and CRM London is the first clinic in London to be offering this new treatment.

Previously founded in the clinics of France and Israel, IMSI has been demonstrated to improve pregnancy rates in patients where sperm quality is an underlying issue. The technique requires that the embryologist performs the routine ICSI procedure, but does so at far greater magnification, paying particular attention to the morphology of the sperm. In current ICSI treatment it is not possible to identify the small defects called vacuoles in the sperm head which represent abnormal packaging of the chromosome material, however, with the introduction of higher magnification equipment it is possible to enlarge the sperm up to 6,000 times and identify these tiny abnormalities. The abnormal sperm are then discarded and only sperm without these vacuoles are injected into the eggs.

Although it does not appear to increase the fertilisation rate of the eggs, clinical studies have shown that IMSI does seem to give better embryo quality, improve pregnancy rates and reduce miscarriage rates. Although the benefits of IMSI have been recognised for some time as described in this article from “The Times” in 2008, UK clinics have been slow to adopt the technology.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article4282460.ece

Rebecca Ventris, the CRM London laboratory manager comments,

“We are all very excited to have trained with the new technique and are looking forward to the benefits and success it will hopefully provide to our patients”.

Rob Smith, senior embryologist says,

“It is a testament to the clinic to carry on providing the most advanced treatments to our patients in a continuous effort to increase our successes and results”.