A married woman in the United Kingdom(UK) having a condition that could be termed ‘missing womb,’ a rare congenital disorder, has received a donor uterus to enable her bear children.
She has also become the beneficiary of the first womb transplant carried out on her by surgeons in the UK.
The woman’s sister was the living womb donor.
The Guardian on Wednesday reports that the unidentified 34-year-old married recipient from England was put through 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 to remain anonymous, received her sister’s uterus in an operation in February at Churchill Hospital in Oxford.
It took the surgeons nine hours and 20 minutes to successfully perform the task and was deemed well enough to leave the hospital after 10 days.
