Is the use of fertile chip beneficial in increasing in vitro fertilization rate in patients with unexplained infertility?

New generation sperm selection methods for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure in patients with unexplained infertility not only allow the selection of sperms with an improved morphology, but also allow the selection of sperms with lower deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage and DNA fragmentation rate. There is no clinical study on the Fertile Chip® sperm selection method, which is one of the new generation micro-fluid liquid-based sperm sorting method. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the fertilization rates, embryo quality, and pregnancy rates after ICSI using the Fertile Chip in patients with unexplained infertility. A total of 122 patients according to the power analysis who would undergo ICSI therapy for unexplained infertility were randomized. Sixty-one patients were allocated to the conventional swim-up method (control group) and 61 patients were allocated to the Fertile Chip as the sperm sorting method (study group). Oocyte pick-up was performed in all the patients. There was no statistically significant difference in the demographic data, treatment protocols and doses between the study and control groups. The fertilization rate was 57,42±21,90% in the control group and 63,64±19,11% in the study group (p=0,098). The mean number of embryos recovered after ICSI was 6,48±4,87in the control group and 7,49±4,31 in the study group (p=0,409). The clinical pregnancy rate per cycle were both 41% in the study group and control group (p=0.57). The clinical pregnancy rate per embryo transfer was 46,3% in the study group and 44,6% in the control group (p=0,39). There was no statistically significant difference in the pregnancy and clinical pregnancy rates between the groups. The proportion of surplus embryos after transfer which has cryopreserved was 81,5% in Fertile group and was 64,3% in control group. There was statistically significant difference between two groups (p꞊0,04). Our study results show that the use of fertile chip is not superior to conventional methods in increasing the success of ICSI on fertilization rate but we also showed cryopreserved embryos rate was higher in Fertile group. These results suggest that there may be other possible factors which play a role in unexplained infertility or patients with unexplained infertility may not be suitable for the Fertile Chip method.