How UK surgeons pulled off country’s first-ever womb transplant

The UK has carried out its first-ever womb transplant. Surgeons successfully pulled off the procedure to transplant the womb in early February, according to several media reports. But what happened? And how did surgeons pull it off? Let’s take a closer look: What happened? According to BBC, the recipient of the womb transplant was a 34-year-old woman and the donor was her 40-year-old sister.

Both women, who live in England, wish to stay anonymous.

Surgeons said the donor already has two children. The recipient was born with Type 1 Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH). This is a rare condition wherein the uterus is absent or underdeveloped, but the ovaries are functioning. The recipient underwent fertility treatment with her husband prior to the procedure and they have eight embryos in storage_._ Both women received counselling prior to the procedure – which was studied and approved by the Human Tissue Authority. The cost of the procedure, around £25,000, was paid by Womb Transplant UK – a charity. How did surgeons pull it off? According to The Journal, the surgery took place at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. Professor Richard Smith, clinical lead at the charity Womb Transplant UK and consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and Isabel Quiroga, consultant surgeon at the Oxford Transplant Centre, part of Oxford University Hospitals led the procedure. Two teams of 30 medical staff and surgeons did the work pro bono. [caption id=“attachment_12747802” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Representational Image.[/caption] According to The Conversation, womb transplantation is a complicated procedure wherein one team extracts the womb from a donor and the other implants it into the recipient. “Both stages of the procedure are serious operations lasting many hours, and the patients remain in hospital for days afterwards,” the piece noted. It added that the recipient must also take immune system-suppressing drugs to stop the body from rejecting the new womb.

According to The Journal, the first team took over eight hours to extract the womb from the donor.

Meanwhile, the second team began working on the recipient an hour before the womb was removed. The entire surgery took over nine hours. “All of the surgical staff met at 7 am and we were back in our hotel at 6.30 am the following morning,” Smith added. Smith was quoted as saying by The Journal that it was “quite remarkable” and that the procedure was a “massive success”. “It was incredible. I think it was probably the most stressful week in my surgical career but also unbelievably positive. The donor and recipient are over the moon, just over the moon." “I’m just really happy that we’ve got a donor who is completely back to normal after her big op and the recipient is, after her big op, doing really well on her immunosuppressive therapy and looking forward to hopefully having a baby.” Al Jazeera quoted Smith as saying the recipient can now have a baby. “Hopefully that embryo will take, and hopefully nine months later she’ll [have a] Caesarean section,” Smith said. “Once she’s had a Caesarean section, she does have a choice – six months later – of a complete hysterectomy or to go and have another baby,” he added. Quiroga, meanwhile, told The Journal she was “thrilled”. It was a very proud moment but still quite reserved – the first two weeks after the operation are nerve-racking. “Now, I feel extremely proud of what we’ve achieved and desperately happy for her.” “She was absolutely over the moon, very happy and is hoping that she can go on to have not one but two babies,” Quiroga added. “Her womb is functioning perfectly and we are monitoring her progress very closely.” According to Sky News, the womb is expected to last around five years. Dr Raj Mathur, British Fertility Society chair told Sky News it is “a remarkable achievement”. “I think it’s the dawn of a new age, a new era in treating these patients,” Mathur, a consultant gynaecologist, added. As per The Guardian, another womb transplant is slated to take place soon and even more patients are preparing to undergo this procedure. Surgeons have been given a go-ahead for 10 such procedures with brain-dead donors and another five with living donors. Smith told the newspaper around 20 to 30 women every year could benefit from such procedures in the near future. Quiroga added, “We have women contacting the charity … such as young women who say ‘I don’t want to have children but I would love to help others have a child’ or ‘I’ve already had my children I would love other women to have that experience’. So yes, there will definitely be a time in which that is a main source of donors.” Al Jazeera quoted NHS England chief midwifery officer Kate Brintworth as saying: “On behalf of the whole health service, I would like to send my best wishes for a speedy recovery to the donor and recipient on what is an amazing milestone.” Doctors in the United States and Sweden have successfully carried out womb transplants. ‘Wouldn’t think twice’ News of the procedure has left other women in similar situations in the UK feeling optimistic about the future. Hannah Vaughan, who found out she had MRKH at age 16, told The Evening Standard she has a “glimmer of hope.”

Vaughan said at the time she was left feeling “quite isolated” and “very different”.

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“That’s not a nice feeling at that age because I was still becoming me and have always wanted to have children and would always talk about it”, Vaughan was quoted as saying. “Even though I had lots of people around me, I still felt isolated. “At that age, I thought I could put it to the back of my mind a little bit because I’m not ready just yet, but at the same time – it still affected me every day and I had counselling at the time.” “I’m just so unbelievably happy for that woman – bless her,” Vaughan added. “It just gives you that glimmer of hope that if that opportunity is there and I am able to do that safely and successfully, I would not even think twice about doing that.” “Having a child of my own and carrying my own child would be the most incredible thing in the whole world for me”, she added. “Unless you have MRKH or have an experience with something which may reduce your chances of having your own children, it is hard to understand what it is like. Lydia Brain told BBC womb cancer diagnosis at age 24 left her needing a hysterectomy. Now, the 31-year-old and her partner have banked several embryos after spending £15 thousand for fertility treatment. “Infertility was a huge part of the impact of my cancer. It affects you every day as you can’t avoid pregnant people, babies, and your friends getting into that phase of their life.” Lydia added it “would mean everything” to have a womb transplant. She said she wants to “carry my own child and have that experience, being able to breastfeed and to have a newborn baby, at least once.” Lydia said while she considered adopting and using a surrogate, she found both rather difficult. “The laws and the process are very difficult.” “You often don’t get a newborn baby” when you adopt, she added. With inputs from agencies