According to a recent study, more than half of U.S. women who underwent uterine transplants went on to become pregnant normally.
Uterus transplantation may be advantageous for more than a million U.S. women, according to study leader Dr. Liza Johannesson of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
According to Swedish doctors who have documented the birth of nine infants, womb transplants are a secure and efficient method of controlling infertility for those without a functioning organ.
They claim to have conducted the first comprehensive research on womb transplants using living donors and have come to the conclusion that the procedure is effective and that both moms and newborns look to be in good condition.
Thirty-three women in the U.S. had uterine transplants between 2016 and 2021, and so far, 19 of them, or 58%, have given birth to a total of 21 children, according to a study published on Wednesday (July 6) in JAMA Surgery.
The ladies were either born without uteruses or required uterine removal, making them all suffer from what is known as absolute uterine-factor infertility. One year after the transplant, the uterus was still working in 74% of the recipients. According to the researchers, 83% of the women in this group gave birth to living children.
For 14 months following the donation, all of the kids were born via cesarean section. Over half were delivered after 36 weeks of pregnancy.
To avoid the requirement for lifelong immunosuppressive medication use, the transplanted uterus is extracted after the recite patient gives birth.
Following the COVID pandemic, Womb Transplant U.K., which is proposing the first womb transplant in the U.K., has screened eligible candidates and plans to restart its program soon.
The team already has the approval to start a program of 10 transplants using organs obtained from donors who are brain dead. Also agreed upon were an additional five live donor surgeries.
The U.S. operations, carried out at the Cleveland Clinic, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Baylor University Medical Center, are a part of the more than 100 uterine transplants that have been carried out thus far in other parts of the world.
The results of this first comprehensive study, according to Mats Brannstrom, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, are "beyond expectations in terms of both clinical pregnancy rate and cumulative live birth rate."
The children who have already been born are healthy, and both donors' and receivers' long-term health is generally good, according to the study's findings on health outcomes.
