Quality Guarantee

Vial Quality & Price Comparison

Here at Seattle Sperm Bank, quality is one of our top priorities and a constant endeavor. We truly stand behind our products with pride and confidence. If you ever have a problem or question concerning your vial quality, please contact us so we can work with you and your clinic to resolve the issue. Our product promise: every properly thawed IUI vial contains at least 10 million motile cells in a 0.5 ml volume, and every ICI vial contains at least 15 million motile cells in a 1.0 ml volume.

We perform a post-thaw count on one vial from every lot to confirm the sperm survive the freezing process and still meet our high standards.
Our fully trained Biological Analysts perform a post-thaw count on one vial from every lot to confirm that the number of motile sperm in our vials meets our minimum quality standard of 10 million motile sperm per IUI vial and 15 million motile sperm per ICI vial. Due to the nature of counting a motile biological specimen and the wide variety of sperm counting systems on the market, actual vial counts obtained by an outside laboratory can predictably vary up to 25% from our target counts. As such, IUI vials counted by your clinic with at least 7.5 million motile sperm per vial and ICI vials counted at 11.25 million motile sperm per vial are considered within an acceptable range of our target motile sperm count. A variation in count does not mean that the specimen is of poor quality or that a pregnancy won’t result if used for insemination. If you have concerns about vial quality and your vial was counted at more than 25% below our minimum quality standard, please have your clinic fill out this Form and return it to SSB.  Please note that any additional shipping and/or handling of the specimens that was not authorized by Seattle Sperm Bank will void SSB’s quality guarantee.

Clients will sometimes ask why we provide 10 million motile cells per IUI vial. The answer is simple and backed by science. Researchers found that if the number of sperm used for insemination was increased, they reached a plateau at 10 million motile cells. This means the addition of more cells did not increase the success rate of achieving pregnancy (Van Voorhis et al.). In another independent study, researchers found no increase in the rate of achieving pregnancy when between 200 thousand and 200 million motile cells were used in intrauterine insemination (Cressman et al.).

Our ICI vials contain more motile cells per vial since clinics will often wash these samples themselves. The extra motile cells provide a margin for clinics since a portion of the cells are lost during processing.