Really dependent on the experience of the operator. We do TESA that takes about 20-25 minutes. The other factor is the type of patient they are doing it with and if it is so dire, it could take an hour or more but if there is sperm, it’s just access to the outside that is impaired it should be in and out.
TESA is usually performed either on the date scheduled for oocyte pick-up or 24 hours beforehand. TESA is conducted by a urologist using a local or general anaesthetic where a small needle and a special syringe are used to extract sperm directly from the testicles.
Unlike the traditional open testicular biopsy, TESA saves time. The procedure takes from 20-30 minutes. The puncture itself takes about 3-10 minutes. During the procedure, the doctor removes the testicular tissue from the testicle or the epididymis and immediately sends the biomaterial to the laboratory. The embryologist examines the piece of tissue for the presence of motile spermatozoa. If there are any reproductive cells in it, a specialist evaluates the quantity and the quality. If no spermatozoa are found, the puncture is repeated on the same or the second testis.
While the recovery period for open testicular surgery may last nearly a week, recovery for TESA is shorter and significantly less painful. After the procedure, the patient is monitored. If there are no complaints, the man can leave the clinic.
The TESA procedure takes approximately 10 to 20 minutes, in rare cases, it could take up to 30 minutes. The average time spent by a patient in the clinic is about 1 to 2 hours.
TESA can take up to 15 minutes or 45 minutes. This will depend on the structure of the testicles and how easy it is for the lab to identify sperm. In general, what we usually do is take a sample of the testicle or an aspiration depending on whether we are doing a TESA or a TESE, and we send that sample to the lab. If the lab identifies a sperm, and they consider that the amount is enough to carry out the treatment, we finish the process. If not, we just keep taking parts of the testicle and small portions of the testicle until we either decide that it’s very unlikely to get any sperm or the lab considers that we have enough sperm to carry out the treatment.
As I’ve said, depending on each case, it could be really fast, for example, in cases of vasectomies in which there is usually a lot of sperm in the testicle, or it can take really long in cases of real secretory azoospermia with small testicles where it could be really hard or sometimes even impossible to get sperm.
