DOCTORS have delivered the second American baby born to a woman following a uterus transplant from a living donor. The little girl was born in February via cesarean section, with no complications, at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, medics confirmed last week. The mother, who has not been identified, was born without a uterus due to a syndrome called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH), meaning she always thought pregnancy and childbirth were not an option for her. However, that changed when she became one of the eight women selected to receive a womb from a donor — six living, two deceased — as part of Baylor’s groundbreaking endeavor in 2016. While four suffered complications that led to their removal, this is the second to prove a resounding success. The breakthrough comes just months after the team announced the birth of the first child in December to a woman who received a womb from a mother-of-two nurse who lives nearby in Dallas, and wanted to give another woman the experience of delivering her own child. The latest birth follows years of attempts by various hospitals to perfect the art of womb transplants, which has only been a success in Sweden, with a live donor, and Brazil, with a deceased donor. A doctor in Sweden, Mats Brannstrom, was the first in the world to deliver a baby as a result of a uterus transplant. As of last year, he had delivered five babies from women with donated wombs. There have been at least 16 uterus transplants worldwide. To be eligible for the Baylor study, women must be 20 to 35 years old and have healthy, normal ovaries. They will first have in vitro fertilization to retrieve and fertilize their eggs and produce embryos that can be frozen until they are ready to attempt pregnancy. After the uterus transplant, the embryos can be thawed and implanted, at least a year after the transplant to make sure the womb is working well. (SD-Agencies) |