A team of doctors in Pune on Thursday performed India's first womb (uterus) transplant on a 21-year-old woman. The woman, who was born without a uterus, was fitted her mother's uterus so that she can attempt to conceive normally.
A team of 12 doctors headed by Dr Shailesh Puntambekar performed the highly complex surgery which lasted more than 9 hours at the Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute in the city.
The younger woman is now under observation and will be kept in the Intensive Care Unit for some days.
Dr Puntambekar said this was the first uterus transplant in India.
The patient was born without a uterus and she wanted to have her own baby and was not ready for adoption or surrogacy. Since they knew about the uterus transplant, they approached us and accepted the surgery option. Fortunately, her mother was found to be a medically suitable uterus donor for her.Dr Shailesh Puntambekar, Medical Director, Galaxy Care
The patient will have to wait a year before trying to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), giving her body enough time to heal and adjust to the new uterus.
A Complex Procedure
The highly complex procedure was first successfully performed in Sweden in 2014 at the University of Gothenburg. So far, only six babies have been delivered from a uterus transplant – two from the same mother.
Uterine transplant operations round the world have often been frustrated by organ rejection, in which the patient’s immune system attacks the transplanted organ.
A New Hope
The procedure gives new hope to the nearly 1.5 million women globally who suffer from absolute uterine infertility. This means they are born without a uterus, with a diseased uterus or their uterus has been removed, rendering them infertile.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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