a procedureIntracytoplasmic sperm injection

An embryologist holds one egg with a suction pipette, picks up one sperm in a glass needle a few micrometres across, pushes the needle through the egg's outer coat and membrane and releases the sperm inside. It was devised for male-factor infertility, where too few sperm swim or none can penetrate an egg, and it is now applied far beyond that. The step happens to a gamete on a microscope stage; the patient is not in the room, and is under anaesthesia only for the egg collection that precedes it.

ICSI has overtaken the treatment it was invented to rescue. ESHRE's fact sheet puts it at around 73% of all fertilisation treatments worldwide against 27% for conventional insemination, and notes in the same breath that outcome rates with each technique are comparable. The CDC's national rows say the same thing about the United States: 77.7% of transfers in 2022 involved at least one embryo fertilised by ICSI, rising to 82.0% among patients under 35 — the age band least likely to have a male-factor diagnosis.

Trade practice — the reason is partly commercial and partly defensive. ICSI removes the failed-fertilisation phone call, which is the worst call a clinic makes, and on a price list it is either bundled at no visible charge or added as a line the patient will not refuse. Reprofit's 2026 list shows the second shape plainly: 620 EUR to inject every egg in a standard cycle, 190 EUR for a single egg in a minimal-stimulation or native cycle.

Inference — where ICSI is bundled, comparing a cycle price across two countries compares two different laboratory operations sold under one word.

Done on the day of egg collection, hours after the eggs are stripped of their surrounding cells and judged mature. Sperm may come from an ejaculate, or from a testicular extraction where there is none in the ejaculate: Reprofit prices TESE under general anaesthetic at 1,545 EUR, with screening and sperm freezing outside it. Sperm-selection add-ons are priced separately again — PICSI at 355 EUR, magnetic separation at 475 EUR, microfluidic sorting at 350 EUR on the same list.

The legal facts that move this step across a border are the ones attached to the sperm rather than the needle. Where donor sperm is banned outright, as under Türkiye's 2010 regulation on assisted reproduction practices and centres, an ICSI cycle using a donor cannot be bought at home at any price; where donor anonymity has been abolished, as in the UK for donations after 1 April 2005, the cycle can be bought but the donor cannot be anonymous. Both push the same cycle to a different country. The rule records carry the jurisdictions and their instruments.

As of September 2026 ICSI appears on the published price lists read for this record in three forms: invisible inside a cycle price in Barcelona and Thessaloniki, itemised at 620 EUR in Brno, and standard-with-no-surcharge in the US clinic's base package. A cycle price that does not name ICSI either way is not saying whether it is included.

This page describes a laboratory technique and what registers and price lists record about it. It is not medical advice.