The women were born without a uterus or had it removed because of cervical cancer. Most are in their 30s and are part of the first major experiment to test whether it’s possible to transplant wombs into women so they can give birth to their own children.
Life-saving transplants of organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys have been done for decades and doctors are increasingly transplanting hands, faces and other body parts to improve patients’ quality of life. Womb transplants - the first ones intended to be temporary, just to allow childbearing - push that frontier even farther and raise some new concerns.
There have been two previous attempts to transplant a womb - in Turkey and Saudi Arabia - but both failed to produce babies. Scientists in Britain, Hungary, the US and elsewhere are also planning similar operations but the efforts in Sweden are the most advanced.
‘This is a new kind of surgery,’ Dr. Mats Brannstrom told The Associated Press in an interview from Goteborg. ‘We have no textbook to look at.’
Brannstrom, chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Gothenburg, is leading the initiative. Next month, he and colleagues will run the first-ever workshop on how to perform womb transplants and they plan to publish a scientific report on their efforts soon.
He said the nine womb recipients were doing well. Many already had their periods six weeks after the transplants, an early sign that the wombs are healthy and functioning. One woman had an infection in her newly received uterus and others had some minor rejection episodes, but none of the recipients or donors needed intensive care after the surgery, Brannstrom said. All left the hospital within days.
None of the women who donated or received wombs have been identified. The transplants began in September 2012 and the donors include mothers and other female relatives of the recipients.
The team had initially planned to do 10 transplants, but one woman couldn’t proceed due to medical reasons, university spokesman Krister Svahn said.
Life-saving transplants of organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys have been done for decades and doctors are increasingly transplanting hands, faces and other body parts to improve patients’ quality of life. Womb transplants - the first ones intended to be temporary, just to allow childbearing - push that frontier even farther and raise some new concerns.
There have been two previous attempts to transplant a womb - in Turkey and Saudi Arabia - but both failed to produce babies. Scientists in Britain, Hungary, the US and elsewhere are also planning similar operations but the efforts in Sweden are the most advanced.
‘This is a new kind of surgery,’ Dr. Mats Brannstrom told The Associated Press in an interview from Goteborg. ‘We have no textbook to look at.’
Brannstrom, chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Gothenburg, is leading the initiative. Next month, he and colleagues will run the first-ever workshop on how to perform womb transplants and they plan to publish a scientific report on their efforts soon.
He said the nine womb recipients were doing well. Many already had their periods six weeks after the transplants, an early sign that the wombs are healthy and functioning. One woman had an infection in her newly received uterus and others had some minor rejection episodes, but none of the recipients or donors needed intensive care after the surgery, Brannstrom said. All left the hospital within days.
None of the women who donated or received wombs have been identified. The transplants began in September 2012 and the donors include mothers and other female relatives of the recipients.
The team had initially planned to do 10 transplants, but one woman couldn’t proceed due to medical reasons, university spokesman Krister Svahn said.