Swedish surgeons performed 9 uterus transplants with the close relatives of the patients being their donors. All the patients are women over 30 with well-functioning ovaries. Most of them have Rokitansky syndrome. It is a rare innate pathology of uterus and vagina which can be found only in 1 of 4.500 women.
The surgeons specify that they didn’t connect the uterus with the fallopian tubes. Consequently, the patients can’t conceive naturally, but they can bear themselves pregnancy achieved through in vitro fertilization. Before the transplant operation the doctors made a collection of the patients’ eggs, fertilized them in vitro and vitrified the created embryos.
Most of the patient’s started having periods after a month and a half after the operation, which means that the transplanted organs do function.
The transplants were experiments carried out as a part of a project the surgeons have been working for fifteen years. The head of the project, professor Mats Brennstrem, coordinating the researches of the doctors from the University of Gothenburg claims that this kind of operation is an innovation in the area of transplantations and there are no published theories or works which can help other surgeons perform uterus transplant operations. But they are publishing their detailed research in one of medical journals very soon.
