In the first surgery of its kind in India, a mother has donated her uterus to her 21-year-old daughter.
The 43-year-old offered to undergo the procedure so that her daughter, who was born without a uterus, can experience childbirth.
The uterus, or womb, transplant took place in the city of Pune in southwest India, Thursday.
The surgery was performed by a team of doctors at Pune’s Galaxy
Care Hospital and led by the hospital’s medical director, Dr. Shailesh
Puntambekar.
"The patients are fine. The surgery took nine and a half hours in total," he said. "The
procedure is difficult because multiple large arteries are to be joined
there, and veins that are small and short," said Puntambekar. "It is
technically very tough."
The patient will have to wait a year before trying to become
pregnant through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), giving her body enough
time to heal and adjust to the new uterus.
According to Dr. Mats Brännström, a professor of obstetrics and
gynaecology at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, only six babies have
ever been delivered from a uterus transplant – two from the same mother.
Brännström led the team that first successfully performed the
procedure in 2014, when – after 11 unsuccessful attempts worldwide by
their team and others – a healthy baby was born in Sweden.
All five babies delivered since have been the result of surgeries performed by the Swedish team.
The womb recipient
Doubts about childbirth
It remains to be seen whether India’s first transplant will result in a birth. "We are responsible for the patient and fulfilling their dreams of becoming a mother, which was impossible for them until now," Puntambekar said, adding that he was aware of the "responsibility on his shoulders," but was feeling "relaxed and confident."
Successful uterus transplants are rare because of the complexity of
the procedure involved: this was the first attempt at the pioneering
surgery in India and only the 30th attempt in the world.
Attempts have also taken place in the United States, Brazil,
Sweden, China, Germany, Serbia, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia and Turkey,
said Brännström.
New way to conceive
In a condition known as absolute uterine infertility, an absent,
removed or diseased uterus can render a woman infertile. It affects one
in 500 women of fertile age, or about 1.5 million women globally.
Uterus transplants could be a way for women with absolute uterine
infertility to conceive, rather than having to adopt or opt for
surrogacy.
The process of a uterus transplant begins with IVF, where the eggs
are removed from the patient, fertilized with sperm and then the
resulting embryos are frozen.
The uterus is then removed from the donor and transplanted into the
recipient. The embryos are implanted in the uterus usually about a year
after the transplant takes place to ensure the body doesn’t reject the
new uterus.
Finally, the patient is monitored for pregnancy.
Typically, the donated uterus would then be removed once the number
of desired children have been born, so that the recipient is not in
continuous need of immunosuppressive drugs, therefore minimizing their
risk of long-term side-effects and their body’s rejection of the new
uterus.
The surgery could, in the future, be used not just on women with an
absent or diseased uterus but also on transgender women who wish to
give birth.
However Brännström feels the procedure still needs more research before it can become more readily available.
"It will be at least 3-5 years before this will become a clinical procedure. We need more data from clinical trials."
Source: CNN
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