FERTILITY

Uncomplicated sexual functioning is not an absolute requirement for fertility. In other words, men who cannot obtain an erection, or women without genital sensation, are not prohibited from becoming parents. For men, as long as there is one testicle that produces sperm, and that sperm can be retrieved somehow ( either through inducing ejaculation through the method of vibrostimulation, causing seminal emission via electroejaculation, or surgically aspirating it), then these sperm can be used to either inseminate a woman or used in higher technology reproductive techniques. Higher or advanced reproductive techniques (ART) include inseminating washed semen into a woman's uterus with a catheter so that her egg may be fertilized in her body, or sperm and eggs can be removed from both the man and the woman respectively and be fertilized in specialized dish in the laboratory ( In vitro fertilization or IVF) or force fertilized by injecting the sperm into the egg (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI) . Hopefully after fertilization begins the cells will divide into an embryo, which can then be placed back in the woman's uterus to grow to into an fetus.

Usually sperm from men confined to a wheelchair following spinal cord injury have poorer quality (the sperm that is made does not move as well and there are a lot of dead sperm in the semen)sperm than before they were injured. There does not seem to be any evidence that the sperm from men with traumatic spinal cord or brain injury, for example, are abnormal in their DNA content, so offspring are at no higher potential for abnormalities than the general population. Women with brain or spinal cord injury should have normal fertility as long as their female hormones are normal and they can produce an egg each month ( called ovulation) that could be fertilized (if menstrual periods are normal then regular ovulation is likely happening). In both men and women, if there is a neurological disease process, or if they were born with a spine or brain defect, genetic counseling is recommended . Any man or women that is undergoing fertility problems may still be a parent through either insemination with donor sperm or adopting a child.

The Vancouver Sperm Retrieval Clinic (VSRC) specializes in helping those couples where the man has difficulty ejaculating or cannot get sperm out without medical intervention. VSRC works in conjunction with centers in BC and other provinces that specialize in ART if this is what the couple may require.