Bengaluru: Diabetes a major cause of infertility'

Bengaluru: Ranga Rao (name changed) has been diabetic for over eight years, the effect of which has gradually started showing on his internal organs. After marriage, he was unable to start a family and even began losing interest in sex. Initially he did not take it seriously and blamed it on fatigue.

After discussing with experts Rao got to know that he was suffering from erectile dysfunction and this was preventing him from becoming a father. After several follow-ups with different doctors, he visited Indira IVF Hospital. Upon a detailed investigation, it was found that he had not been controlling his diabetes for a long time.

Diabetes is a widely prevalent lifestyle disease and it needs to be controlled through diet, weight management, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Doctors claim that diabetes has now become a major cause for infertility these days. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates, the overall prevalence of primary infertility in India is between 3.9% and 16.8%. “The patient was advised a healthy balanced diet to control his diabetes, in order to produce better quality sperm. Along with regular monitoring of his blood sugar, his semen analysis was done on a regular basis,” said Dr Manjula B.C., gynaecologist and IVF expert Indira IVF Hospital.

After six months Ranga Rao was called upon for a procedure known as Microsurgical Epididymal Sperm Aspiration (MESA), where the healthy sperms were directly retracted from the scrotum to perform ICSI (Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection), Dr Manjula added.

She claimed that MESA along with ICSI has excellent potential for men who have had a vasectomy and do not wish to undergo surgical reversal, or had a failed surgical reversal. “Patients with the problems of erectile dysfunction and premature semen ejaculation have also highly benefitted. Being a minimally invasive procedure, it is easier for the patients without undergoing any surgical intervention,” she said.

Ranga Rao, who has been married for the past five years, recently became a father of a baby girl through an advanced IVF Procedure.