The British doctors are hopeful that the world's first successful womb transplant operation will be carried out by them within 2 years.
Women unable to have children because they are born without a uterus or have had to have an emergency hysterectomy will be benefited from this operation.A new method to provide a transplanted womb with a reliable blood supply has been developed by a team of researchers at London, New York and Budapest.
In 2000, a 26-year-old Saudi woman underwent the world's first uterus transplant. But the operation failed when a clot developed in the blood vessel supplying the organ. This was the major problem, which has been overcome by the new procedure. It has been successful in animals and can be performed successfully in humans also.
Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecologist at Hammersmith Hospital in west London, said: "By getting to a place where we seem to have a reliable method of giving the uterus a blood supply, that takes us a whole heap closer to being able to provide this for humans."
Mr Smith and his team have been working on the project for eight years. They hope that transplantation of a womb from a dead donor to a woman unable to conceive will be possible soon.
He said: "We are relatively close. I think that two years probably is realistic. Two other groups of researchers - in Saudi Arabia and Sweden - are also working on human womb transplants. Already 30 women, most of them British, have expressed an interest in undergoing the procedure”, Mr Smith said.
Advertisement
GYT
