Woman gives birth after womb transplant

PARIS: A 36-year-old Swede has become the world’s first woman to give birth after receiving a womb transplant, doctors said Saturday. “It was breathtaking. I think all of us felt that,” surgeon Liza Johannesson said in a video supplied by her university.

The healthy baby boy was born last month at the University of Gothenburg’s hospital. Both mother and infant are doing well. The baby was born by Caesarean section at 31 weeks after the mother developed pre-eclampsia, a pregnancy condition, according to the medical journal The Lancet. Because of a genetic condition called Rokitansky syndrome, the new mother was born without a womb, although her ovaries were intact.

The surgeons said the exploit smashes through the last major barrier of female infertility — the absence of a uterus as a result of heredity or surgical removal for medical reasons.

The replacement organ came from a 61-year-old woman, a close family friend. The organ was transplanted in a 10-hour operation last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2014.