In a stunning first, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic are getting ready to do something with a human uterus for the first time ever.
Following on the recent success of transplanting a uterus from a live woman to another woman, doctors will now attempt to transplant a uterus from a deceased subject into a live woman so she can give birth, a huge step forward for medicine that could change the pregnancy options for barren women, according to a New York Times report.
Just a few months from now, depending on the availability of each uterus, the doctors will attempt the transplant, which if successful could allow a woman who has no uterus but fully functioning ovaries to get pregnant and actually deliver a child.
It’s an exciting development that eight women have signed up for to be screen. Each of them either didn’t have a uterus at birth or had their uteruses damaged or even removed at some point in their lives.
This clinical trial comes after the first live birth from a uterine transplant in Sweden, which used live donors. Due to concerns about putting a healthy woman at risk to make such a transplant, the Cleveland Clinic doctors want to try using it from a deceased donor.
The hospital will conduct 10 operations, and then reevaluate to determine if it should continue doing them. The results could be huge: if successful, an estimated 50,000 women in the U.S. would be eligible for such a procedure, allowing women who had given up hope of ever having a child the opportunity to experience childbirth.
There are concerns about the procedure, however, particularly from the side effects of the powerful drugs women must take in order for the body not to reject the transplant. Also, further surgeries may be needed to remove the uterus after one or two babies are born.
Women who elect for the procedure will have to have their eggs fertilized in advance via in vitro fertilization, after which the eggs would be frozen before the uterus transplant.