Woman becomes first in the world to fall pregnant after womb transplant

A woman, Derya Sert who underwent the world’s first successful womb transplant is pregnant. The success of her IVF fertility treatment could give hope to thousands of childless women.

Doctors treating the 22-year-old said early test results were ‘consistent with the expected signs of pregnancy’. Mrs Sert was described as a ‘medical miracle’ when she became the first woman in the world to have a successful womb transplant, from a dead donor, in August 2011.

Since then other women have also been given a womb transplant, but Mrs Sert is the first to become pregnant. Doctors in Antalya, Turkey, waited for 18 months before implanting an embryo into the transplanted womb, to give the pregnancy the greatest possible chance of survival.

However, Mrs Sert still faces a high risk of miscarriage and other complications in the early stages of pregnancy. There is also a chance of birth defects linked to the immune-suppressing drugs used in transplants.

Mrs Sert was born without a womb, a rare condition which affects around one in 5,000 women. But her ovaries were healthy and she produced eggs, which doctors harvested before the womb transplant to create embryos fertilised with sperm from her husband Mustafa. 

Earlier this month at least one fertilised embryo was placed into the new womb by specialists at Akdeniz University Hospital in Antalya. Any baby would be delivered via Caesarean section after eight months, to reduce the chance of premature labour.

Following a birth, doctors would then carry out further surgery to remove the donor womb, to avoid the risk of infection or rejection. A successful birth would give hope to the 15,000 women in Britain who are born without a womb or who have had hysterectomies.