Three weeks after the successful completion of India’s first uterine transplants, both patients — a lady from Solapur and another from Gujarat — were discharged on Thursday, said doctors at the city-based Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute where the operations were performed.
The woman from Solapur, who suffers from congenital uterus absence, was fitted with her mother’s womb which was retrieved mainly through laparoscopic or minimally invasive surgery (MIS) after a nine-hour operation on May 18.
The second womb transplant, of a lady from Baroda with a dysfunctional uterus and suffering from Asherman’s Syndrome (adhesions or internal scar tissues), was achieved in even lesser time the following day.
Two doctors each in Gujarat and Solapur have been detailed to monitor the women, said Dr. Shailesh Puntambekar, Medical Director, GCLI, who led the team which performed the surgeries.
“Both patients are in good health. After internal tests, we find that the inner lining of the uterus in both cases has thickened while the blood parameters, too, are within normal range. Menstruation is expected by day 40 since the conclusion of the operation,” said Dr. Puntambekar, adding that the pregnancies in the future would be in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as opposed to natural conception.
The cervical biopsy tests to gauge organ rejection after the uterus transplant carried out on both patients in the first and second weeks after the operation showed no signs of organ rejection, said Dr. Sanjeev Jadhav, a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon who played a major role in the operations.
Dr. Puntambekar said that sperms had been taken from the respective husbands of the patients and that eight embryos had been frozen.
“We will have to wait for another six months at least before the embryos would can be implanted in the transplanted wombs,” he informed.
Both women expressed happiness that the surgeries went off without incident and fervently hoped they would be able to experience pregnancy in the near future.
The hospital has received more than 80 applications since the completion of the first operations, with most of the cases pertaining to women with congenital uterus absence.
A majority of the 20-odd uterine transplant operations performed round the world to date have often been frustrated by organ rejection (in which the patient’s immune system attacks the organ; an infection of the organ; or problems with the organ’s blood supply).
Only a handful of these sometimes-controversial operations have met with success, primarily in Sweden.
