Women Without a Uterus May Soon Have Option to Become Pregnant

Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas will be among the first hospitals in the United States to perform a uterine transplant.

The treatment was successful in Sweden two years ago and could be a major breakthrough for some women who are unable to have children.

"I have to emphasize this, the success here is not in the transplant. The success here is the birth of a healthy baby," said Goran Klintmalm, chief of the Baylor Annette C. and Harold C. Simmons Transplant Institute.

The surgery would give a woman without a uterus – whose only options have been adoption or surrogacy – a chance to have a child.

"We want them to be between 20 and 35 years old because that's a healthy pregnancy age," said womb transplant research nurse Kristin Posey Wallis. "We want them to be physically fit, healthy and with no major health concerns. They need to have working ovaries which will help us have healthy embryos."

Recipients would be women who were born without a uterus, have had it removed or had uterine damage.

The women would have to wait a year to heal from the surgery before having in vitro fertilization.

Babies would be delivered by Cesarean section. Unlike transplant surgeries, where recipients keep the organ for life, after the women have one or two successful births the uterine transplant would be removed.

Doctors call the operation "highly experimental."

Patients would have to live locally since they would have to take anti-rejection pills before and during pregnancy.

"We would have to monitor these patients on a very tight schedule to make sure that there's no rejection of the uterus, and if there's rejection that the body is trying to get rid of this organ we would have to treat them," said Koon.

Baylor will use live and deceased donors of any adult age as long as the uterus is healthy.

Baylor is currently looking for patients between the ages of 20 and 35 who live in the area or are willing to relocate.