Is it true that azoospermia patients have no sperm?

  ”Unfiliality has three, no offspring is the greatest”, time into the 21st century, Chinese people’s life norms are still swayed by traditional concepts, reproduction of offspring is not only a family structure component needs, or the embodiment of male self-esteem. When a husband is diagnosed with “azoospermia”, especially “non-obstructive azoospermia”, he often feels that the world is coming to an end and feels that he is going to be “extinct” and is an incomplete man. The azoospermia patient is really a man. So, is it true that azoospermia patients have no sperm?  In fact, among the azoospermia patients, there are two categories, one is obstructive and the other is non-obstructive. As the name implies, obstructive means that there is sperm in the testicles but it cannot come out; non-obstructive means that there is no sperm in the testicles or there is too little sperm to see in the semen. Therefore, some patients with azoospermia still have sperm in their testicles or epididymis. In the past, only a small percentage of obstructive patients could have their vas deferens opened surgically, and most patients could only be artificially inseminated through sperm donor or carry a child. Now, as long as there is sperm in the testes, including non-obstructive azoospermia, a simple testicular fine-needle aspiration is all that is needed to aspirate a small amount of testicular tissue, and if there is sperm, the sperm can be cryopreserved and later thawed at any time, and through treatment with intracytoplasmic single sperm injection, about 40% of couples can conceive their own children each time.  However, many patients still have concerns, on the one hand, they are very interested in this technology, but on the other hand, they are worried about the safety of this technology, such as whether the offspring will be normal, whether there will be deformities, mental retardation, etc. According to the results of our fertility center over the years and a large amount of information from home and abroad, the IQ, malformation rate and incidence of genetic diseases of the offspring of this technology are the same as those of normal IVF, and there is no significant difference between them and the babies delivered by normal conception. However, it should be noted that the offspring may inherit defects that prevent the father from giving birth normally, which means that the offspring may also have to undergo this technique, which we call “intra-oval single sperm puncture family”. We should be optimistic that with the rapid development of modern science and technology, perhaps in a few decades, these genetic diseases can be eliminated through genetic level treatment, so our current concerns are superfluous.