Dr. Keith Jarvi
Dr. Jarvi is the Director of the Murray Koffler Urologic Wellness Centre and Head of Urology at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto and directs the Male Infertility Program at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Jarvi completed his Urology Residency at the University of Toronto and then had Fellowship training in Male Reproduction with Dr. Dale McClure at the University of California at San Francisco and a basic science fellowship in Male Reproduction supervised by Dr. Claude Gagnon at McGill University in Montreal.
Dr. Jarvi then began the Male Reproductive Medicine program at the University of Toronto. This program is a centre of excellence for the management of male infertility and has grown into the largest clinical program of its kind in Canada and one of the largest in North America. Close to 1000 new patients are seen yearly with over 5000 patient visits.
The program involves a multi-disciplinary team from Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Department of Medical Imaging, Medical Genetics and Obstetrics and Gynecology. The centre acts as a tertiary referral centre for difficult infertility cases. At the clinic, patients are seen from all over Canada and from many parts of the world.
Dr. Jarvi has been at the forefront of the use of new and innovative surgical techniques in Canada. He was the first in Canada to perform sperm aspiration for in-vitro fertilization, use a minimally invasive technique to retrieve sperm, use the sperm mapping procedure to retrieve sperm, use the newest technique of micro-surgical reconstruction of an obstruction of the reproductive tract.
He has also developed innovative techniques of surgery which are now in widespread use. These include a minimally invasive technique to perform a vasectomy reversal and techniques to surgically bridge gaps in the reproductive tract.
Dr. Jarvi has helped train over 20 urology fellows, 45 urology residents, 20 gynecology fellows, 20 gynecology residents, 5 graduate students, 4 undergraduate students and innumerable medical students. The urology fellows have gone on to develop their own centres for the treatment of male infertility in hospitals all across Canada, the United States, South America and the Middle East.
Dr. Jarvi’s research has focused on:
- Biomarkers to diagnose male infertility (work funded by PSI and Canadian Urology Association);
- Genetic causes of male infertility;
- Cystic fibrosis mutations were identified by our group in a high proportion of men with infertility (supported by NIH, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Canada);
- Novel mutations where he has found novel mutations in men with infertility (supported by CIHR) sperm DNA damage;
- Infection in male infertility (supported by NIH, PSI, Kidney Foundation);
- Identification of novel non-cultureable infections in prostatitis (supported by NIH, PSI);
- Identification of new biomarkers for the early detection of prostate cancer: (supported by the Canadian Urology Association).
Dr. Jarvi has published over 70 articles in peer reviewed journals, has been an invited speaker in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East and acts as an advisor to the Government of Canada on issues related to male infertility.
