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Uterus transplant recipient gives birth for the first time in the US
A woman who received a uterus transplant has given birth to a baby -- a first in the US, Time reports. She is part of an ongoing uterine transplant clinical trial taking place at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and she, like the other women in the trial, has a nonfunctioning or nonexistent uterus. Her uterus was donated by another woman, Taylor Siler, who wanted to be able to give someone else the opportunity to have a child. The trial, which accepts both living donations, like Siler's, and donations from deceased individuals, will complete 10 transplants. Eight have been completed already and while at least three have failed so far, a second trial participant is now pregnant following a successful transplant.
Scientists successfully grew fetal lambs inside 'uterus-like' bags
Doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have developed a new artificial womb that could benefit the tens of thousands of critically preterm (younger than 26 weeks) births in the US each year. According to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the research physicians successfully kept fetal lambs alive inside a "uterus-like" plastic sack for up to four weeks -- longer than any similar device before it.
Surgeons complete first uterus transplants from live donors in US
A team of surgeons at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas have achieved something that hadn't previously been done in the US. With the help of a Swedish surgical team, doctors performed the first uterus transplants from living donors. The experimental procedures took place between September 14th and 22nd with four total transplants. While the first three were unsuccessful, the fourth patient is showing positive results based on follow-up tests. The transplanted uteri were removed from those first three patients and they're expected to resume normal activity soon.
The first uterus transplant in the US has failed
Medical progress sometimes doesn't go according to plan. Cleveland Clinic has announced that the first US uterus transplant failed just two weeks after doctors put it in. Details of what went wrong are scarce, but the Clinic says that a "sudden complication" forced the removal. While the 26-year-old patient (referred to only as Lindsey) is recovering well, it's clear that such a groundbreaking procedure isn't easy. Not that the Clinic is giving up -- it's continuing with a transplant study that should include 10 women, and hopes that this transplant will eventually give more women a chance at childbirth.
Cleveland Clinic performs first uterus transplant in the US
Doctors in Cleveland have performed the first successful uterus transplant in the United States. But, once the 26 year-old recipient has one or two babies, the womb will be removed so she can stop taking medications that prevent her body from rejecting the foreign organ -- a very real risk that's haunted the procedure in the past. Her previously impossible pregnancy will rely on in vitro fertilization, using her eggs (harvested prior to the transplant) that've been fertilized with her husband's sperm and then frozen, according to The New York Times.
