Women get uterus transplants from mothers

Two Swedish women are hoping to be able to give birth after receiving uterus transplants from their own mothers. The two unnamed women in their thirties underwent the operations over the weekend. They are believed to be the first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants in history. Despite the operations going well, surgeons at the University of Gothenburg were waiting for the transplant recipients to fall pregnant before celebrating. "We are not going to call it a complete success until this results in children," surgeon Michael Olausson said. "That's the best proof." One of the transplant recipients lost her uterus to cervical cancer, while the other was born without a uterus. Both women started IVF before the operation, with frozen embryos to be transferred into their wombs in a year. Gothenberg's professor of obstetrics and gynaecology Mats Brannstrom had the idea for the procedure in 1999, when an Australian cancer survivor asked him if it was possible. The world's first womb transplant was performed in 2000 in Saudi Arabia, but it was not a success.