A medical feat. Swedish woman’s successful uterus transplant brings great hope to women suffering from uterine infertility. This 36-year-old woman, born without a uterus due to a genetic condition, could not have children. But the miracle happened thanks to advances in medicine that made it possible to transplant a uterus from a living donor. The feat, unique in the world, was revealed on Saturday, October 4, in the British medical journal The Lancet.
One year after the uterus transplant, the patient received a frozen embryo from one of her eggs fertilized by in vitro fertilization (IVF) before the transplant. This is how pregnancy was made possible. The Swede gave birth to a baby weighing 1.775 kg almost 31 weeks pregnant. Both mother and baby boy are healthy.
The merit of this first successful uterus transplantby Professor Mats Brännström, specialist in obstetrical gynecology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. This “success is based on more than ten years of intensive animal research and surgical training by our team and it creates the possibility of treating many young women around the world who suffer from uterine infertility,” explains- he does.
This is the first time that a uterus transplant, from a living donor or not, has been successful. “We have demonstrated the feasibility of transplanting the uterus from a living donor, even when the latter is postmenopausal”, specifies the expert.
This successful transplant should give heart balm to women who cannot have children due to the lack of a uterus. There are several reasons for this: a malformation or removal of the uterus related to cancer or bleeding from a previous pregnancy.
For these women, the transplant was not possible until now and the only recourse they had was to appeal to a surrogate mother (or surrogacy). A practice, which we recall, remains prohibited in France.