Woman With Transplanted Uterus Gives Birth, the First in the U.S.

Woman With Transplanted Uterus Gives Birth, the First in the U.S.
“I’ve seen so many births and delivered so many babies, but this was a very special one.”
At Baylor, eight women have had transplants, including the new mother, in a clinical trial designed to include 10 patients.
I feel very thankful for their contribution, more so than I can express.”
Both Dr. Johannesson and Dr. Testa said that a large part of their motivation came from meeting patients
and coming to understand how devastated they were to find out that they would not be able to have children.
The mother, who was born without a uterus, received the transplant from a living donor last year at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas,
and had a baby boy there last month, the hospital said on Friday.
Four other transplants failed after the surgery, and the organs had to be removed, said Dr. Giuliano Testa,
principal investigator of the research project and surgical chief of abdominal transplantation.
Another hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, performed the first uterus transplant in the United States in February 2016, but it failed after two weeks because of an infection
that caused life-threatening hemorrhage and required emergency surgery to remove the organ.
Dr. Liza Johannesson, a uterus transplant surgeon who left the Swedish team to join Baylor’s group, said the birth in Dallas was particularly important because it showed
that success was not limited to the hospital in Gothenburg.