India's first womb transplant to be carried out today by Pune hospital

A 21-year-old Solapur woman will become the first in the country to undergo a uterus transplant in Pune on Thursday. The woman, who suffers from congenital absence of uterus since birth, will be fitted with her mother's womb so that she can conceive normally. 

Pune's Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute (GCLI), where the surgery will be done, has been granted a license by the state's Directorate of Health Services to carry out the uterus transplant. It will be an eight-hour surgery. The recipient will remain in ICU for a week and another two weeks in general care. During this period, the transplanted uterus will be studied almost every day. 

Doctors have already extracted and cryo-preserved eight eggs (ovum) from the woman's normally functioning ovary, which will be implanted in the transplanted uterus eight months after the complex surgery. The immediate success of the surgery will be assessed after three weeks following multiple doppler and sonography studies to see whether the transplanted uterus has regular blood flow and functions normally. 

For the transplant, besides the usual pre-operative protocols, the recipient has been made to undergo ovulation stimulation by pre-planned IVF for oocyte (egg) retrieval. The frozen embryos have been prepared and kept ready for implantation, if and when the transplant becomes successful. Simultaneously, a course of immunosuppressants has been started to bring down chances of rejection of the transplanted uterus. The donor has been prepped for a hysterectomy.

The much-debated surgery is attempted world over with limited success. Around 25 surgeries have been attempted world over, but less than 10 successful post-transplant pregnancies are known.

Source: ToI