ABSTRACT
In this text I would like to focus on one special counselling problem in our work with infertile couples and the resulting questions. In Tübingen we have established a pretherapeutic clinical and genetic evaluation and counselling programme especially for couples undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment. After gynaecological counselling and evaluation, the couple is referred for genetic counselling. In principle two different types of counselling situations exist:
The sterile otherwise healthy couple without any unusual genetic risk for future offspring – which means most probably they have the same general risk as everybody (a 3–5 per cent risk of abnormalities in a child).
The sterile couple with unusual findings: e.g. a monogenetic disorder or a chromosomal aberration in one of the partners. They might have a reasonable, sometimes high risk for a genetic disease or abnormalities in offspring.
