US Woman Gives Birth To Healthy Baby Girl After Receiving Uterus From Deceased Donor

For the first time in the US medical history, doctors have delivered a baby to a woman who received a womb transplant from a deceased organ donor.

The baby girl was born in June via cesarean section to a patient in her mid-30s, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio said in a statement on its website.

clevelandclinic.org

According to the online statement, this woman who gave birth is among 10 other women who suffer from uterine factor infertility and are part of a medical trial involving transplant of the reproductive organ.

The statement reads, "Women who have UFI don¡¯t have a uterus, or had their uterus removed, so they aren¡¯t able to get pregnant. The study is testing whether receiving a uterus transplant from a deceased donor could allow these women to become pregnant ."

An estimated one in 500 women of child-bearing age are affected by the irreversible condition, according to the hospital.

The report shows that uterus transplants from deceased donors are feasible and may open access for all women with uterine infertility.

Who can benefit from this procedure?

Women who suffer from uterine infertility, including those who have undergone hysterectomies for reasons ranging from cancer to endometriosis, may be able to take advantage of the procedure moving forward.

"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," Dani Ejzenberg, from University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, who led the research told the Washington Post.

Cleveland Clinic delivers the first baby in North America using a uterus transplanted from a deceased donor.https://t.co/eW8sg1JxSt pic.twitter.com/74w10Y5qcd

¡ª ClevelandClinicNews (@CleClinicNews) July 9, 2019

According to reports, this process of uterus transplant first started with a Swedish doctor who conducted the first successful uterine transplant from a living donor in September 2013. The first transplant from a dead donor was carried out in December, 2018 at a hospital in Brazil.

Since the trial began, the team has completed five uterus transplants, three of which were successful, including this one, which resulted in a live birth, reports the hospital¡¯s website

"The transplantation of a uterus into a woman is a complex procedure that requires suppression of her immune system response,¡± says transplant surgeon Andreas Tzakis, MD.

¡°Through this research, we aim to make these extraordinary events ordinary for the women who choose this option. We are grateful to the donor. Their generosity allowed our patient¡¯s dream to come true and a new baby to be born.¡±

How does the transplant work?

Just as transplants would work for other organs such as the heart or kidney, for the uterus it's pretty much the same.

In the case mentioned above, it's the second time that physicians have delivered a baby from a woman with a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor.

The first occurred in 2017 in a Brazilian trial involving a 32-year-old woman born without a womb who received a uterine transplant from a 45-year-old woman who'd died of a stroke in September 2016.

The surgeons then performed a uterus transplant, connecting the donor organ to the recipient¡¯s veins, arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals during a surgery that lasted more than 10 hours.

After the transplant, the woman began a regimen of immunosuppressant medication to ensure she would not reject the donor organ.

The process for this patient took about 15 months from transplantation to birth, reports the CNN.

The patient began menstruating about a month after surgery. And just seven months after the operation, doctors began in vitro fertilization, through which the woman¡¯s own fertilized eggs.

There were no issues during the recipient's pregnancy, other than a kidney infection at 32 weeks which was treated with antibiotics in hospital. The baby girl was born via caesarean section at 35 weeks and three days, states the hospital's website. The transplanted uterus was removed during the caesarean section and the patient showed no signs of distress.