Motility Counts - concern?

m123w456

My first IUI did not result in a pregnancy and I'm wondering if I should look for a different donor. My counts were 21m motile with 30% motility (not sure if the motile number takes into account that only 30% are swimming correctly?). I've researched the motility % as much as possible, and it seems that "normal" is at 50% and that the motility percentages may be more important than the sperm counts. Financially, I will only have 4 tries. Next attempt will be in about 2 weeks, so I need to decide soon. Is the 30% low compared to what others have experienced? More importantly, anyone have success with a number around 30%?

CLI Moderator

This is from the CLI website. Hopefully this will help you to understand your motility questions.

Is there a quality standard that CLI sets for all of the donor samples?

All of our donors must meet a minimum post-thaw (PT) total motile sperm count (TMC).

ICI (unwashed) specimens have a minimum PT standard of 18 million TMC per vial. IUI (pre-washed) specimens have a minimum PT standard of 10 million TMC per vial. IVF specimens have a minimum PT standard of 5 million TMC per vial.

To read more about CLI quality standards, check out our website http://www.cryolab.com/SpecimenQualityStandard.shtml.

Here's a great blog on the topic by the CLI Director of Operations How much do I need?

m123w456

I've read all of this information but they don't answer my question about the motility percentage. I was hoping to get a more personal response that explains things better. Has anyone else had a similar experience and what did you do about it? I've since heard from my dr and she said they normally look for 40% motility with at least 32% forward progressing (or something to that effect).

Any input would be great!

narfks

A little late on the response but I thought I would still go ahead and respond. We didn't think to inquire on the motility counts for each donor we were interested in before settling on one. When we received our first vial we were disappointed/surprised to see that the motility percent was only 25%. I did a similar thing and looked online to see that that percent was low. However, the good news for us was that we were successful after only the first try. I should note that we did two inseminations in the cycle for better odds. We now have a one year old.
Best of luck to you!

CLI Moderator

It is not motility alone that is important, nor is it count alone that are important.
The magic number is the Total Motile Cells (TMC.)

This blog post from Fairfax Cryobank should help people understand the importance of motility of donor sperm.
Importance of Sperm Motility and Count