What is Retrograde Ejaculation? Its Symptoms, Causes & Treatment

“Retrograde Ejaculation or dry ejaculation happens when sperm don’t leave the body through the penis but flow back towards the bladder where urine is stored. It can cause fertility problems in men and is usually found in a fertility checkup.”

Urine and ejaculate both move through the urethra in men. Near the neck of the bladder is a muscle called a sphincter that works to help retain urine until you’re willing to urinate.
The same muscle contracts while orgasm to prevent ejaculate from accessing the bladder. It can then pass through your urethra and then out the penis tip.

In case of retrograde ejaculation, this muscle couldn’t not contract. The ejaculate tends to end up in your bladder since it remains relaxed. A dry orgasm is the consequence of this. Despite the absence of ejaculate, it feels like a normal orgasm and has no impact on sexual pleasure.

It isn’t a disease or a severe health danger.

Retrograde Ejaculation Symptoms

• The presence of little or no semen during an orgasm is a common sign of retrograde ejaculation, which occurs when sperm remains in your bladder instead of your urethra.
• Since the semen mixes with the urine, you may notice that your urine appears cloudy straight when you’ve had sex.
• You’ve been trying and failing to conceive a child, which is another sign of retrograde ejaculation. Male infertility is the term for this.

Retrograde Ejaculation Causes

A tube termed the vas deferens carries sperm to the prostate during male orgasm, within which they combine with other fluids to form liquid semen (ejaculate). As ejaculate travels from the prostate into the tube within the penis, the muscle at the bladder opening (bladder neck muscle) stiffens to avoid accessing the bladder (urethra).

The bladder neck muscle doesn’t somehow tighten properly during retrograde ejaculation. Consequently, rather than being removed from your body through the penis, sperm can access the bladder.

Several situations can cause issues in the muscles closing the bladder during ejaculation. Some of them are:

• Surgery for testicular cancer, like bladder neck surgery, retroperitoneal lymph, prostate cancer treatment or prostate surgery, or node dissection surgery.
• Specific medications to treat hypertension, prostate enlargement, and anxiety can cause side effects.
• A medical problem like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or a spinal injury causing nerve damage.

A dry orgasm is the most common sign of retrograde ejaculation. Dry orgasm, or the ejaculation of very little sperm, can be a result of variety of factors, including:

• The bladder is surgically removed (cystectomy)
• For the cancer treatment in the pelvic area, radiation therapy is used.
• The prostate is surgically removed (prostatectomy)

Men Who Has Higher Risk of Retrograde Ejaculation

Retrograde ejaculation isn’t dangerous and only needs medical attention if you and your partner conceive. If you are experiencing dry orgasms, see your doctor ensure you don’t have an underlying issue that needs addressing.

Consult your physician if you and your female companion have had frequent, unprotected intercourse for a year or more and are unable to fall pregnant. Retrograde ejaculation might be the main reason of your trouble if you ejaculate no semen.

Risk factors

• You’ve diabetes or multiple sclerosis.
• Undergone surgery on your prostate or bladder.
• You’re on medicines for increased blood pressure or a mental illness.
• Suffered a spinal cord injury

When to See a Doctor?

Retrograde ejaculation is not a life-threatening condition that requires urgent medical attention. However, when you and your partner are trying to have babies, this health condition can cause problems like male infertility and lack of semen for impregnation. You may require proper medical attention to resolve this issue.

Diagnosis of Retrograde Ejaculation

The doctor will first evaluate your ailment and run other diagnosis. Following that, your doctor will give a treatment plan.

Your physician will check:

• Inquire about your signs and how long you’ve been experiencing them. Your doctor may also inquire about any health issues, surgeries, or malignancies you’ve had. Also, any medications you’re currently taking.
• Perform a physical examination, which will most likely entail penis, testicles, and rectum examination.
• After an orgasm, the doctor will check your urine for the existence of sperm. This treatment is commonly performed in the physician’s office. Your doctor will instruct you to clear your bladder, masturbate to orgasm, and provide a urine sample for testing. Retrograde ejaculation occurs when there is a presence of a significant amount of sperm in your urine.

You might have difficulty with semen production if you do have dry orgasms but no sperm in your bladder. Injury to the prostate or the semen-producing glands due to surgery or radiation therapy for pelvic cancer can end up causing this.

If your doctor thinks something besides retrograde ejaculation is causing you a dry orgasm, you may need additional tests or a recommendation to a specialist to determine the cause.

Treatment Procedure of Retrograde Ejaculation

If retrograde ejaculation isn’t interfering with fertility, it usually doesn’t require treatment. Treatment relies on the underlying cause in such instances.

Medications

For retrograde ejaculation prompted by nerve damage, medications may be effective. Diabetes, multiple sclerosis, specific surgeries, and other circumstances and treatments can all cause this sort of damage.

If your retrograde ejaculation is the result of a surgery, like Bladder neck surgery or transurethral prostate resection results in lasting physical modifications to your anatomy, drugs are unlikely to help.

If your doctor suspects that the drugs you’re taking are interfering with your ability to ejaculate, he or she may ask you to quit taking them for a while. Certain antidepressants and alpha-blockers for treating high blood pressure and some prostate circumstances can end up causing retrograde ejaculation.

These drugs help to keep the bladder neck muscle closed when experiencing ejaculation. While medications are often effective in treating retrograde ejaculation, they can have side effects or negatively affect other medicines. If you have hypertension or cardiovascular disease, specific medicines for treating retrograde ejaculation can raise your heart rate and blood pressure, which can be risky.

Treatment for infertility

You’ll almost certainly need treatment to help your female partner conceive if experiencing retrograde ejaculation. You must ejaculate sufficient semen to transport your sperm into your partner’s vagina and then into her uterus to become pregnant.

If your medication prevents you from ejaculating, you’ll most likely need assisted reproductive technology (ART) to help your partner conceive. In certain situations, the doctor may recover sperm from your bladder, process it in the lab, and then inseminate in your partner.

Other Surgical Treatment

Some medications stimulate antegrade (forward) ejaculation. If these efforts are unsuccessful, a doctor could aim to extract sperm even without man having to ejaculate. Surgical techniques for sperm removal include:

• Testicular sperm aspiration (TESA): Testicular sperm aspiration (TESA) is a procedure that removes sperm from the testicles using a needle under local anaesthesia.
• Percutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration (PESA): This process requires local anaesthesia to extract sperm from the epididymis (the duct that links the testes) using a needle.
• Testicular sperm extraction (TESE): TESE, like TESA, takes away sperm from the testicles while the patient is under sedation. TESE, unlike TESA, necessitates a testicular incision.

After successfully removing semen, a doctor can assist a man’s partner in becoming pregnant in one of two main ways:

• In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a procedure in which a woman’s egg is removed and fertilised in a petri dish. When an embryo matures, the doctor implant’s in the woman’s uterus.
• Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is a process in which a doctor injects sperm directly into a woman’s uterus who is ovulating.

Bottom Line

If you’re experiencing orgasms but no ejaculation, consult your doctor to identify the cause and govern out the underlying condition.

There are no significant risks, and it will not essentially interrupt your sexual life.

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