Uterine transplants in Sweden

One of the remaining challenges in Reproductive Medicine is helping women who were born without a uterus, or have had the uterus removed or have severe scar tissue in the uterus making it difficult or impossible to carry a pregnancy. One of the problems we see from time to time in our practice is women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome who are born without a uterus. The only options for these couples is to use a gestational carrier with IVF to carry the pregnancy for them, what most people think of as a “surrogate.” Picking up on research that began over a century ago, doctors in Sweden are using modern surgical techniques and medications to enable transplantation of the uterus. The big unknown is whether the blood supply in the transplanted uterus will enable adequate delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the unborn fetus and whether the drugs used to prevent rejection are safe for the pregnancy.  Only time will tell.