World’s first birth for womb transplant patient

A MOTHER has given birth to a healthy baby girl after surgeons implanted a womb in her body taken from a dead person.

The birth, in Brazil, is the first reported involving a deceased donor womb transplant.

Ten previous attempts, in the US, Czech Republic and Turkey, to achieve a live birth using a womb taken from a dead individual, had all ended in failure.

The first birth after a womb transplant from a living donor took place in Sweden in September 2013. Since then, there have been 39 such procedures resulting in 11 live births.

The recipient in the groundbreaking latest case involving a dead donor was a 32-year-old woman born without a womb due to a rare genetic disorder.

In September 2016, she was given an unexpected chance of motherhood after undergoing the womb transplant at the Hospital das Clinicas in Sao Paulo.

The uterus was taken from a 45-year-old donor who had died from a brain haemorrhage.

Surgeons spent 10.5 hours plumbing in the organ by connecting veins, arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals.

News of the successful procedure was disclosed in The Lancet medical journal.

Dr Dani Ejzenberg, from the Faculty of Medicine at Sao Paulo University, who led the team, said: “The use of deceased donors could greatly broaden access to this treatment, and our results provide proof-of-concept for a new option for women with uterine infertility.”

An estimated one in 500 women have no wombs or abnormal wombs due to hysterectomies, inherited disease, malformation or infection.