World's first womb transplant

The world's first womb transplant has been carried out.

Doctors hailed the breakthrough as the crossing of one of the last great frontiers of surgery. The news will give hope to the 15,000 women in the UK who are unable to become pregnant because of problems with their womb.

Dr Richard Smith said: "They have achieved a lot. They have shown it is technically feasible to perform the operation in a woman, which is a world first."

The 26-year-old patient was implanted with a healthy womb from a living 46-year-old donor who had had an emergency hysterectomy following a caesarian birth. The woman, now 28, needed the life-saving operation after suffering massive bleeding during the birth of her first child six years ago.

But she wanted another baby. After the transplant in April 2000, at the King Fahad hospital and research centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the lining of the womb thickened to 18mm - more than enough to sustain a pregnancy - and the woman had three normal periods.

But after 14 weeks the surgeons, Wafa Fageeh, Hassan Raffa, Hussain Jabbad and Anass Marzouki, had to remove the womb because of blood clotting, which they believe was a result of the uterus moving within the pelvis, the International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics has revealed.

An editorial in the journal, cowritten by Dr Smith - consultant gynaecologist at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital - nevertheless hails the Saudi team of surgeons for crossing one of the last frontiers of transplantation.

It says: "To some individuals, childbearing is the greatest event of a lifetime. To such persons, transplantation of organs of reproduction would not be considered frivolous or unnecessary, even though these organs do not sustain life."

Following the transplant, the young woman had been given the same drugs as those taken by kidney transplant patients to prevent the womb being rejected by her body.

Dr Smith, who has carried out pioneering studies on womb transplantation, said he has a file full of requests from women desperate to be given the chance of a transplant, but he cannot get the £500,000 funding his team needs.

He called for a public debate on the subject and said: "There are difficulties in that we are talking about transplanting a non-vital organ and there is no doubt that it is hazardous surgery."