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Indian Doctors Have Pulled Off The Country's First Womb Transplant

A mother donated her uterus to her daughter who was born without one.
3D rendered Illustration. Isolated on black.
Spectral-Design via Getty Images
3D rendered Illustration. Isolated on black.

Doctors at Pune's Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute have successfully conducted India's first womb transplant operation on a 21-year-old woman who was born without a uterus, according to reports. Her 41-year-old mother was her donor.

"The first case always takes time and in the case of this 21-year-old girl who was born without a uterus, we had to recreate the blood supply before fitting the womb that was donated by her 41-year-old mother," Dr Shailesh Puntambekar, whose team performed the tricky operation, told the Indian Express.

It took the doctors over four hours to retrieve the uterus from the mother through minimally invasive surgery, in a day-long procedure that went on until Thursday night, the report said.

The woman from Akkalkot in Solapur was not the first choice though. Another candidate — a 26-year-old woman from Baroda — was ruled out because of fitness issues. The transplant is a significant step towards helping women who cannot conceive due to various medical reasons, become mothers.

"Around 80 percent of the retrieval of organ was done laparoscopically and only towards the tail end of the surgery when we had to take out the organ from donor's body that we adopted open surgery method by taking a small incision so that vessels supplying blood to the uterus are not squeezed and damaged," Puntambekar told Times of India.

However, not everyone approves of the procedure.

A Swedish doctor who performed the world's first successful uterus transplant surgery, had said the Pune hospital had "no proper preparations at all" to conduct the complicated surgery.

"What is planned in Pune is a dangerous escapade of surgical cowboys wanting to be the first in their country and to get (worldwide) publicity and fame easy," Dr Mats Brännström, who led the world's first womb transplant in Sweden in 2012, told Hindustan Times.

Though the condition of the daughter and the mother is stable, however, the next 48 hours will be crucial in determining the true success of the surgery, according to doctors.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.