Recent advances in sperm procurement and processing have made fertility conditions once deemed hopeless a thing of the past. Even cases of sterility are now either treatable or entirely circumvented through various clinical techniques, including surgical correction, hormone treatment, and various sperm enhancement technologies.

This anthology presents these latest sperm procurement and processing methods in chapters written by acknowledged experts in their respective fields. The editor hopes that this collection will provide clinical and laboratory professionals from all areas of fertility science with both a comprehensive overview and a handy reference resource.

The primary biological function of the male reproductive system is procreation facilitation. The system accomplishes this through two fundamental processes: generation of fertility potential within the male, and subsequent male genome delivery directly into the female reproductive tract.

Spermatozoa (or “sperm”), as the exclusive male genome vehicle, is the vital carrier and component of male fertility potential. “Sperm procurement methods” are clinical procedures designed to acquire viable sperm for analysis, analysis interpretation and, if deemed necessary, sperm utilization for various assisted reproductive techniques and artificial insemination procedures.

Any difficulty with sperm procurement, analogous to problems with male fertility as a whole, can involve biological deficiencies with sperm creation, delivery, or both. The various procurement methods described in this text are all designed with one purpose in mind: acquisition of as many viable spermatozoa as possible, given initial patient conditions.