CLEVELAND–Doctors have announced a huge breakthrough in reproductive technology.
The New York Times released a special report about doctors form the Cleveland Clinic, which has announced that within the next few months it will be the first hospital in the Untied States to transplant a uterus into a woman.
Candidates are already being screened in hopes of being one out of 10 to initially get the procedure. After the first 10, the six key doctors involved in the research will determine if they can offer the procedure to the masses.
All successful uterine transplants ever conducted were completed in Sweden. Nine woman have had the procedure, and four have given birth. A fifth is due in February. Two failed transplants had to be removed: one because of a blood clot, and the other because of an infection.
But there’s one major difference between the Swedish procedure and the ones that Cleveland Clinic’s doctors will use: in Sweden, they use a uterus surgically taken from a woman who is alive. In Cleveland, the doctors will only use uteruses from deceased women in an effort to not put anyone else’s lives at risk during surgery.
Also, the surgeries performed in Cleveland will be temporary. The women will be allowed to have up to two children before doctors remove the uterus. That is because after a transplant patients must take anti-rejection drugs, which are not good for your health over a long period of time. That is why the women must wait one full year after the transplant before getting pregnant.
Women who were born without a uterus–which is about 1 in every 4,500 women–as well as women who needed to have their uterus removed or have uterine damage will be eligible for the procedure, though they must have ovaries.
It’s estimated that 50,000 women may be eligible.
However, women who want the transplant must be in a stable relationship, and go through psychological evaluations to determine if they are able to handle all the issues that come along with a major surgery.
Another interesting facet to this revolutionary surgery is that while the women should be able to get pregnant, they won’t be able to do it naturally; they will have to have in vitro fertilization because the Fallopian tubes will not be attached to the uterus.
While doctors expect the procedures to be successful, there are risks, and the surgeries in general will be considered high risk. First, women will have to have a C-section prior to their due date. Also, the exposure of both the woman and her fetus to the anti-rejection drugs is a risk, though doctors point out that thousands of women who have had kidney or other transplants and have to take anti-rejection drugs while pregnant have healthy babies.
