A revolutionary treatment for men otherwise unable to conceive that was pioneered at the Cornell School of Medicine has been performed for the first time by urologists at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan in the US. Categorized as a microsurgery, the procedure involves the surgical harvesting of sperm cells from a patient whose choices would otherwise be limited to using donor sperm or adopting children, according to Ali Dabaja, M.D., director of reproductive medicine and sexual medicine at Henry Ford Health System. Candidates for the operation are those whose semen contains very few or even no sperm cells, a condition called non-obstructive azoospermia, which affects about one percent of the male population and 10 percent of those seeking fertility treatment.
“Until recently, it was assumed that men with non-obstructive azoospermia were untreatable,” says Dr. Dabaja.…
