A team of doctors in Brazil have announced a medical first that could someday help countless women unable to have children because of a damaged or absent uterus. In a case report published [December 4] in the Lancet, they claim to have successfully helped a woman give birth using a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor.
According to the report, the team performed the operation on an unnamed 32-year-old woman in a Brazilian hospital in September 2016. The woman had been born with a rare genetic condition that left her without a uterus, known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, but she was otherwise healthy. The donor was a 45-year-old woman who had suddenly died of stroke.
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Four months prior to the transplant, the recipient woman had received in-vitro fertilization, which yielded eight viable embryos that were frozen. Following the 10-hour-long surgery, which connected the uterus and part of the donor’s vagina to the recipient’s vagina and circulatory system, the woman then took a regimen of immunosuppressant drugs that kept her body from rejecting the donor uterus. Seven months later, she had an embryo successfully implanted. And 35-and-a-half weeks after that, she gave birth to a seemingly healthy baby girl, delivered via cesarean section.
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The feat is something that could make the procedure a much more appealing and realistic way for some women to conceive.
Read full, original post: In World First, Woman Gives Birth After Receiving Uterus Transplant from Dead Donor

















