Know about womb transplants in Sweden, first babies to be born next year

New Delhi: The womb transplant or uterine transplant is the surgical procedure whereby a healthy uterus is transplanted into an organism whose uterus is absent or diseased.As part of the normal mammalian sexual reproduction process, a diseased or absent uterus does not allow for normal embryonic implantation to occur, effectively rendering a female infertile.The new wombs, taken from a mother or other living relative who has completed her family, will not only allow the women to experience the joys of pregnancy but will mean they have babies that are genetically their own.The transplants have ignited hope among women unable to have children because they lost a uterus to cancer or were born without one..In a recent achievement, Swedish doctors have completed a pioneer project successfully transplanting wombs to nine women. All nine women will soon try to conceive and the first baby from a donor womb could be born next year.Most of the patients are in their 30's and all of them were either born without a uterus, or had it removed because of cervical cancer.The pioneer project that doctors from Sweden's University of Gothenburg started in September 2012 initially involved 10 transplantees, but one woman could not proceed due to medical reasons.So far, all nine patients are doing fine and many had periods six weeks after the transplantation, proving that the wombs are healthy and functioning. Now they are expected to conceive soon and then deliver babies by next year.The groundbreaking transplants bring hope to at least 15,000 British women of childbearing age.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 and elsewhere are also planning similar operations but the efforts in Sweden are the most advanced because it involves taking wombs from living donors. It is a controversial subject at present because removing a womb for donation is like a radical hysterectomy but it requires taking a bigger chunk of the surrounding blood vessels to ensure adequate blood flow, raising the risk of complications for the donor.British officials don't consider it ethical to let donors take such chances for an operation that isn't considered life-saving.About one girl in 4,500 is born with a syndrome, known as MRKH, where she doesn't have a womb.