History

Our center was originally founded by its director, Dr. Marc Goldstein, Professor of Urology and Reproductive Medicine, at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Medical College of Cornell University and the Center for Biomedical Research of the Population Council at the campus of the Rockefeller University in 1982.

It was the first university center in the United States to be devoted exclusively to male infertility treatment and research. It was also the first to join with the IVF program at the same university campus to provide coordinated, collaborative care for the infertile couple. The Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery has cared for over 7,000 infertile couples for whom a significant or exclusively male factor contributed to their fertility problem.

In the past five-years, few fields in modern medicine have changed as dramatically as reproductive medicine, especially for the new treatment of male infertility. With the leadership of its Director, Dr. Marc Goldstein, over 85% of microsurgical procedures for the innovative treatment of male infertility were first developed, or modified and introduced here at Cornell. Those important and innovative microsurgical procedures are Mini-incision Microsurgical Inguinal and Subinguinal Varicocelectomy; Microsurgical Vasectomy Reversal with the Microdot Method for Precision Suture Placement; Microsurgical Vasoepididymostomy with Triangulation end-to-side technique; Microsurgical Epididymal Aspiration (MESA) with ICSI; Microdissection Sperm Retrieval in Non-obstructive Azoospermia (TESE), and No-scalpel Vasectomy.

With many years of hard work, our Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at Cornell has been playing an extremely important role in developing various new microsurgical techniques. The center has also gained a great reputation for leading and establishing a higher standard for today's male infertility treatment worldwide. Our center has also provided the comprehensive guidelines for new management of men with non-obstructive and obstructive azoospermia. In addition, the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at Cornell has achieved several of the highest reported success rates in the world for the microsurgical treatment of male infertility. Previously, only men with obstructive azoospermia were possible candidates for treatment, either through microsurgical reconstruction or microsurgical sperm aspiration. Now however, men with non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) are even able to achieve pregnancies without having to resort to donor sperm. We have recognized that the key to success in today's microsurgical treatment for male infertility is to maximally invest our basic microsurgical training and research. The Center has trained over 20 fellows in male reproduction and provides a special training program for international physicians in microsurgery and male reproduction. In addition, hundreds of domestic and international fellows, residents, medical students, visiting fellows and physicians have been trained at our microsurgical program.

To share our successful experience with others, we have procured and developed a complete set of educational microsurgical training videos to standardize the quality for each microsurgical procedure for the treatment of male infertility. Many of these educational videos produced and developed at Cornell have received several of the highest awards from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and American Urologic Association (AUA), for their clarity and their educational and scientific content. The videos are:

• Microsurgical Vasovasostomy: The Microdot Method of Precision Suture Placement (1996)
• No-Scalpel Vasectomy: with a step-by-step instruction (1996)
• Mini-incision Microsurgical Subinguinal Varicocelectomy with Delivery of the Testis (1995)
• Microsurgical Epididymal Sperm Aspiration with ICSI (1996)
• Creation of A Hypospadias Dog Model and Microsurgical Hypospadias Reconstruction Using A Tubularized Mucosal Graft (1996)
• The Autogenous Sperm Reservoir (1995)
• Interviews on Male Infertility with ABC, CBS, NBC and others. (1996)
• The State-of-the-art lectures of Male and Female infertility Treatment. (1996)
• Triangulation End-to-side Microsurgical Vasoepididymostomy (1998)
• Microdissection TESE: Sperm Retrieval in Non-obstructive Azoospermia (1998)

While many have expressed appreciation for these videos and other educational and training materials we have produced, physicians from outside of Cornell are still not able to learn these microsurgical techniques simply by viewing a video, slides and reading our articles, or attending our lectures. Therefore, male infertility specialists have come to recognize that successful microsurgical technique requires a high quality and comprehensive hands-on training program.Step-by-step and hands on training, in a laboratory environment, are the only efficient means of truly mastering these challenging microsurgical techniques. Once the fundamental microsurgical skills are mastered an entirely new and exciting world of microsurgery is made possible.

Since the treatment of male infertility has developed so quickly, we expect more and more physicians worldwide to welcome the opportunity to come to our Center at Cornell to attend our microsurgical training course for male infertility treatment.