PHOTOS: First successful womb transfer recorded in India

• Posted on May 22, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

A 21-year lady has become the first person to undergo a womb transplant in India after her 41-year old mother donated her womb to her. The recipient was born without a uterus.

“We will start to retrieve the uterus at around 9 am from the donor and transplant it in recipient,” Dr. Shailesh Puntambekar, the medical director at Galaxy Care Hospital, who led a team of 21 surgeons said before the surgery.

He added that the entire procedure would take around eight hours.

The minimally invasive retrieval of the womb carried out mainly through key hole surgery and its subsequent transplant performed only through open surgery took nine hours. “We started at noon on Thursday. It took us four-and-a-half hours to retrieve the uterus from the 41-year-old woman,” Dr Shailesh Puntambekar said.

Since the majority of the retrieval part was done through minimally invasive keyhole surgery medically known as laparoscopic surgery, the donor did not even require blood transfusion. The complicated womb transplant surgery took nine hours.

“Around 80 percent of the retrieval of organ (uterus) was done laparoscopically and only towards the tail end of the surgery when we had to take out the organ (womb) 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,” said Dr. Shailesh Puntambekar after the surgery was successfully performed.

With a deep feeling of happiness, he further added “The surgery has been successful. The condition of the recipient and donor is stable. Another 48 hours will be crucial in determining the outcome the surgery.”