Doctors in Britain are hailing as an amazing medical achievement the first birth of a child in the country from a woman who had a uterine transplant.
36-year-old Grace Davidson was diagnosed in her teens with a rare condition (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome) that occurs in about one in 5,000 women.
Women with the syndrome do not have a uterus or one that has not developed properly, but their ovaries are intact and produce hormones, so it is theoretically not impossible to conceive by artificial insemination.
Davidson gave birth by caesarean section on February 27 in a London hospital to a two-kilogram baby girl.
Before the surgery, in 2023, she had undergone the procedure to freeze her eggs.
With her 37-year-old husband, Angus, Davidson said they had received “the greatest gift we could ever ask for.”
They named the baby girl Amy Isabel after Davidson’s sister, who donated her uterus (she already had two children) during an eight-hour surgery, and Isabel Kiroga, the surgeon who helped perfect the transplant technique.
The development, as reported by the Guardian, offers new hope for women born without a uterus or those whose uterus is severely malfunctioning.
Three more uterus transplants have been carried out in Britain, using cadaveric donors.
Around 10 women are going through the approval process for a £25,000 uterus transplant. Hundreds more have expressed interest in the programme, which is funded by Womb Transplant UK.
The charity is licensed for 10 transplants from a deceased donor and five transplants from a living donor. It hopes the UK NHS can provide funding in the future.
To date, 100 uterus transplants have been performed around the world, and 50 children have been born, the eldest of whom, a boy from Sweden, is now 11 years old.
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