PICSI is an acronym stands forPhysiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection and it’s a way of selecting sperm by its capacity to bind to hyaluronic acid. So it’s a type of selection procedure for sperm based on its ability to bind to this particular molecule and those sperm that do that are believed to be more physiologically important for the sperm binding to an egg for instance. There’s been a lot of trials, clinical trials to demonstrate the use-fullness of this in IVF however, none of them to date have demonstrated that it does lead to or increase the chances of a live birth during the procedure. So the jury is still out on this and it’s considered a red on the HFEA traffic light system for the add-on procedures.
PICSI is another one of the new tools which use a chemical substrate that allows the more mature forms of spermatozoa to stick and hence, it gives us a way to further select our spermatozoa – not only based on their morphology but on the ability to stick on this special substrate chemical substrate which indicates the higher maturity status. When using PICSI, we aim to advance our sperm selection and hence, advance the prognosis and improve the prognosis and chances for a better outcome. However, there are still contradicting results on what the clear benefit when using PICSI is and for which patient PICSI is more indicated. So, we still have challenges linked to the use of PICSI.
So PICSI is the same as ICSI but in this case, we select the sperm into a dish with hyaluronic acid, and we select the sperm that are mature. So in this case we only have the mature sperm to get into the egg, so we make sure that the sperm is mature.
