Impact of Varicocele on Pregnancy and Live Birth Outcomes in Men with Clinical Varicocele: Systematic Review of Controlled Studies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: To investigate the impact of varicocele on pregnancy and live birth outcomes in men with clinical varicocele in controlled studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted across the PubMed and Scopus databases using Boolean operators, covering all available records from each database's inception through June 30, 2024. The inclusion criteria focused on controlled studies that compared pregnancy-related outcomes-including pregnancy, miscarriage, and live birth rates-between men with clinical varicocele and those without. These studies included participants attempting conception either spontaneously or through assisted reproductive techniques. RESULTS: 76.4%; p=0.04). CONCLUSIONS: The relationship between varicocele and conception remains contentious, primarily due to the limited number of controlled studies available for analysis. Despite an extensive systematic search for controlled studies comparing pregnancy-related outcomes in men with and without clinical varicocele, only two studies met the inclusion criteria. These studies showed no significant differences in time to achieve pregnancy or previous conception rates between the two groups. However, men with varicocele exhibited a slightly lower, statistically significant, live birth rate compared to men without varicocele. This highlights the need for further research on this topic to provide evidence-based guidance on the impact of varicocele on fertility outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.076 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.009 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".