Histopathologic Patterns of Testicular Biopsies in Men with Infertility and Azoospermia in a Nigerian Tertiary Hospital

Abstract

Infertility is a common public health problem worldwide. It is defined as inability to conceive after one year of unprotected sexual  intercourse. Investigations for male infertility include seminal fluid analysis (SFA) and azoospermia is one of the abnormal findings.  Testicular biopsy is frequently done on such patients to unravel the testicular cause of infertility.The aim of this work was to study the pattern of testicular histopathological findings in patients with azoospermia among men with infertility in our facility. We retrospectively  evaluated testicular histology reports of twelve (12) patients between 2018 and 2020 who underwent bilateral testicular biopsy for  azoospermia. Biodata of these patients alongside with the type of infertility, duration of marriage was entered into a proforma designed  for this study. Patterns of histopathology were further scored using the modified Johnson Scoring system and recorded. Data were  entered into the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20.0 software and analyzed. Mean age of patients was 39.75+6.122  years ranging from 34- 53years. Primary infertility predominated. Mean duration of marriage was 4.92 + 2.392 years ranging th from 2 to  10 years. Men in their 4^th decade of life formed the majority (58.3%). The most commonly encountered histopathological pattern was  seminiferous tubule hyalinization in 41.7% of the cases with a modified Johnson Score of 1 dominating the picture (58.3%). Our patients  were relatively young with majority having poor prognostic testicular histologic pattern. This was also seen in both local and international  studies.