Brazilian woman gives birth, using womb transplanted from dead donor

A woman in Brazil has successfully given birth after receiving a womb from a dead donor, the first time such a procedure has been successful, the Guardian reports.

While researchers in countries including Sweden and the US have previously succeeded in transplanting wombs from living donors into women who have gone on to give birth, experts said the latest development was a significant advance.

“With a deceased donor, you reduce the risk because you don’t have the risk to the donor – and you reduce the costs, too, because you don’t have the hospitalisation and the very long surgery of the donor,” said Dr Dani Ejzenberg of the University of São Paulo, who led the research.

Ejzenberg said that finding a living donor could also be difficult, while coordinating operations was logistically challenging.

It is not the first time a womb transplant from a dead donor has been tried, but none had resulted in a live birth until now. The team said the baby girl was healthy and developing normally.

Once the baby was delivered, the team removed the womb in the same operation. Ejzenberg said that was done because it would have been expensive to keep the woman on immunosuppressive drugs and the team hoped to use scarce funds to allow other women to undergo the procedure.

The team said the procedure could bring hope of fertility to women with a number of conditions, including those who have had a hysterectomy for medical reasons. “You have a substantial number of patients that can benefit from this technique [of womb transplant],” said Ejzenberg.

The team said the success meant that women for whom surrogacy or adoption was previously the only option for starting a family might soon have another path they could choose.