most men have no trouble fathering children in their lifetime. but of those that do of couples that have a hard time conceiving that present to a fertility doctor 60 percent of the problems can be related to the female factor 40 percent to the male. and because male factor fertility can actually be a symptom of something more serious it’s not something to be ignored. testicular cancer often can present as a form of male infertility. hormonal and metabolic disorders can present as infertility. so when a couple presents to a doctor and is having trouble conceiving it’s really essential that the man go to a urologist get a separate complete exam blood test hormone test to be sure that there’s not something more serious that’s going on. and with a lot of the new advances in sperm aspiration and retrieval and the new assisted reproductive technologies doctors are just saying well it doesn’t work it’s not great but we don’t need much all we need is one sperm now and they bypass the evaluation so that the guys and their potential health or metabolic problems are being ignored. you can have congenital absence of the vas that may be a warning sign of cystic fibrosis that you may want to know about if you are having trouble conceiving so again that can only be found with a good urological exam. so the moral of this story is if you and your wife are having problems um -- conceiving then absolutely you should be seen at reproductive specialist on both the female side and a urologist ideally one with reproductive fertility training.
how common is it for a man to have a fertility problem?