First uterine transplant planned in the UK

British doctors want to use ten women a donor organ
As early as 2012, Swedish doctors had two women use a uterus (uterus) to enable them to get pregnant. Now, in the future, in the UK, uterine transplants should be possible. But to qualify as a recipient, women must meet a number of strict criteria.

One in every 7,000 women is born without a womb
Just over a year ago, a woman in Sweden had given birth to a son for the first time after undergoing a uterine transplant. The woman was born without a uterus and should be given the opportunity to become pregnant through the donor uterus. As the news agency "AFP" reports, British doctors now want to venture the expensive and complicated intervention.
According to this, more than one hundred eligible women reported that ten of them were to be selected in the first half of 2016. The team will be led by the gynecologist Richard Smith of Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, the AFP continues.

First time transplantation of a uterus. Image: BillionPhotos.com - fotolia

"There is an innate desire among many women to deliver their own baby, and this procedure may be able to satisfy this innate desire," Smith said on Wednesday in a conversation with British news channel BBC. According to the experts, about one in 7,000 women were born without a uterus, in other cases there would be a loss of the organ due to a cancer. If the attempt is successful, according to the experts, "the first UK baby" could be born in early 2018.

Recipients must be under 38 years of age and of normal weight
In order to be selected, however, the applicants have to fulfill numerous criteria. Accordingly, it is a prerequisite that the women are younger than 38 years, have a healthy body weight and live in a stable partnership. It is planned to create embryos in advance of the intervention of the egg cells of the women and the spermatozoa of the partners, but these are not put into the transplanted womb until about a year later. These would come from brain-dead donors, the AFP statement said.

Almost € 70,000 cost per intervention
According to Richard Smith, each procedure costs about 50,000 pounds (about 67,700 euros) - a sum that women could not afford themselves. By donations, however, so far so many funds have come together that for the time being two of the six-hour operations could be carried out.

"Over the years, I've had a lot of crises with this project ... but when you meet the women who were born without a uterus, or whose uterus had to be removed for some other reason, it's really heartbreaking and that's what we got continue, "said the gynecologist to the" BBC ". (No)