First Womb Transplant Carried Out In UK

Surgeons in the United Kingdom have successfully performed the first womb transplant on a woman.

The woman’s sister was the living womb donor.

According to The Guardian on Wednesday, the unidentified 34-year-old married recipient from England underwent a nine-hour transplant procedure.

The married woman was born with a rare condition, meaning her original womb was underdeveloped. She received a donor womb from her 40-year-old sister, who already had two children of her own.

The recipient was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, which is a rare ¬congenital reproductive disorder that affects one in 5,000 women. Sufferers of this syndrome have an underdeveloped vagina and/or missing womb.

The co-lead surgeon Isabel Quiroga, a consultant surgeon at the Oxford Transplant Centre, part of Oxford University hospitals, said she was “thrilled” and “extremely proud” the surgery had been a success.

The recipient, who lives in England and asked not to be named, received her sister’s uterus in an operation in February at Churchill hospital in Oxford. It took nine hours and 20 minutes and she was well enough to leave the hospital after 10 days.