What else is covered in the report?
Volume: This is the amount of semen produced and for a sample this needs to be more than 1.5 ml. For comparison, a teaspoon holds around 5 ml.
pH: This refers to how acidic or alkaline the semen is. Semen is ideally between 7.2 and 8 which makes it slightly alkaline.
Appearance: Here the lab technicians are looking for anything unusual to the naked eye, the categories are clear, normal or slightly clear. Normal is the ideal result.
Viscosity: This means being thick, sticky, and semifluid in consistency. The ideal is normal, but it could also be classed as highly viscous or slightly viscous.
Liquefaction: This is when the gel formed by proteins from the seminal vesicles break up and the semen becomes more liquid. It normally takes less than 20 minutes for the sample to change from a thick gel into a liquid.
Agglutination: This refers to stickiness - what percentage is clumping together.
Aggregation: This is when sperm stick together by head or tails, which can cause issues.
Round Cells: These may be signs of infection - perhaps a previous infection you’re getting over or a current one. Worth looking into this further if there are more than 1 million cells per ml of fluid.
MAR Test: The test is used to diagnose immunological infertility, which means that antisperm antibodies are present that prevent conception from taking place.
Other areas that may be covered: Depending on your results the following areas may be mentioned;
- Aspermia: absence of semen
- Azoospermia: absence of sperm
- Hypospermia: low semen volume
- Hyperspermia: high semen volume
- Oligozoospermia: very low sperm count
- Asthenozoospermia: poor sperm motility
- Teratozoospermia: sperm carry more morphological defects than usual
- Necrozoospermia: all sperm in the ejaculate is dead
- Leucospermia: a high level of white blood cells in semen
View example report (PDF, 700KB)
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