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In 2014, Swedish professor Mats Brannstrom completed the first successful womb transplant in the world. The woman has since had her first child and, it was recently announced at a medical conference for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in the UK that she is now pregnant with her second.
Her success has now prompted doctors all over the world to follow in Brannstrom’s path, hoping to provide more women womb transplants. Many women don’t have wombs healthy enough to support pregnancy, or are simply born without wombs.
Doctors are hoping to develop a new, more effective procedure to support these women. Wombs would be taken from the bodies of dying donors – for instance, braindead patients with beating hearts – and transferred to the bodies of these women in need.
Unfortunately, success has not been widespread.
A clinic in the United States attempted its first uterus transplant in March, but the surgery failed after sudden complications arose a few days later. Everyone does, however, remain hopeful for the progress to come. The same US clinic has another nine transplants scheduled for this year, and will continue to carry out these procedures until it succeeds.
In the UK, Richard Smith, leader of the UK Uterine Transplant Research Programme which has just received permission to schedule its first ten uterine transplants, is just as hopeful: “The success of Brannstrom’s Swedish team shows that at least some of these women will be able to bear their own child where before there was no hope.”
Like everyone else, we remain hopeful for the future and hope this woman has a safe second pregnancy.
