UK woman donates womb to sister in country’s first uterus transplant

A woman from the UK has donated her uterus to her younger sister who underwent the country’s first womb transplant. The procedure was successful and now the recipient, 34, is planning to have two children using In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), according to media reports.

The married woman, who received the womb from her 40-year-old sister, was born with a rare condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), due to which her womb was underdeveloped. The condition affects about one in every 5,000 women and results in an underdeveloped or missing womb, reported The Guardian.

However, the ovaries of those with MRKH are still functional and produce eggs and female hormones. This means that such women can conceive after fertility treatment, the report added.

The transplant

The woman, who did not wish to be named, underwent the womb transplant in February at Churchill Hospital in Oxford. It took surgeons nine hours and 20 minutes to complete the procedure and the recipient recovered enough to leave the hospital after 10 days, the Guardian report said.

According to The Telegraph, the woman underwent two rounds of fertility stimulation to produce eggs and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to create embryos before receiving her sister’s womb.

Five of the embryos reached the blastocyst stage and were frozen to be used for further treatment of the patient at the Lister Fertility Clinic in London later this year, the report said.

Prof Richard Smith, the gynaecological surgeon who led the organ retrieval team, told BBC that the transplant was a “massive success”.

“The whole thing was emotional. I think we were all a bit tearful afterwards,” he said.

Transplant surgeon Isabel Quiroga, who oversaw the implanting of the womb, said the recipient was “absolutely over the moon, very happy, and is hoping that she can go on to have not one but two babies”.

“Her womb is functioning perfectly and we are monitoring her progress very closely,” Quiroga added, according to the BBC report.

After the transplant

While the procedure was successful, doctors want to make sure that the transplanted womb is stable before the recipient undergoes IVF. She will be needing immunosuppressant drugs throughout her pregnancy to prevent her body from rejecting the donated organ, according to the Daily Mail.

Once the woman completes her family, she will get her womb removed to avoid taking immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life.

About Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome

It is a condition that causes “your vagina and uterus to be missing or underdeveloped". People typically discover they have MRKH syndrome during their teen years when they never have a menstrual period, as per Cleveland Clinic.

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