Transplanted womb birth

London – A woman in Brazil who received a womb transplanted from a deceased donor has given birth to a baby girl in the first successful case of its kind, doctors reported.

The case, published in The Lancet medical journal, involved connecting veins from the donor uterus with the recipient’s veins, as well as linking arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals.

Ten previously known cases of uterus transplants from deceased donors – in the US, the Czech Republic and Turkey – failed to produce a live birth.

The girl born in the Brazilian case was delivered via caesarean section at 35 weeks and three days, and weighed 2.5kg, the case study said.

Dani Ejzenberg, a doctor at Brazil’s Sao Paulo University hospital who led the research, said the transplant – carried out in September 2016 – shows the technique is feasible and could offer women with uterine infertility access to a larger pool of donors.

“The numbers of people willing and committed to donate organs upon their own deaths are far larger than those of live donors,” Ejzenberg said in a statement about the results.