It was a few days ago and the story went around the world. After 31 weeks of pregnancy, a 36-year-old Swedish woman gave birth to a baby boy by caesarean section after receiving the uterus of a 61-year-old postmenopausal woman. 10 years of research to achieve this transplant that allows women without a functional uterus to consider maternity. And the team from the University of Göteberg could be followed by others, French in particular.
That’s what we learn today Point. Relaying information from the Medical Press Agency (APM), Anne Jeanblanc confirms that “two teams believe they can carry out similar interventions next year”.
At the Limoges University Hospital, doctors are working on the possibility of removing uteri from deceased donors. For Dr. Pascal Piver, who co-directs this work with Dr. Tristan Gauthier, this sampling option has three advantages. The intervention lasts 10 hours on a living donor, half an hour if the person is deceased. Uteruses of younger women may be removed. But above all, any medical act presents a risk, the removal of an organ from a living person is no exception to this reality.
Followed by the Biomedicine Agency, the Limoges doctors received favorable opinions to include eight couples in their protocol. “An in vitro fertilization treatment will be carried out in order to obtain embryos which will be frozen, then the transplant will be considered”, specifies the journalist. After achieving pregnancy, the uterus will be removed, an almost unprecedented phase in the history of transplantation.
At the Foch hospital in Suresnes, the other medical team is also in the starting blocks. She has also collaborated with her Swedish colleagues. “We are one of the only centers to support the transformation of transsexual women [en] men, who want a hysterectomy,” Professor Jean-Marc Ayoubi told APM. So, question from the journalist: “Will the first French baby born after such an intervention be from Limoges or Ile-de-France? Answer probably in 2015”.
