A top-rated hospital in the United States could soon be the first in the country to perform uterus transplants.
A Thursday press release from the Cleveland Clinic stated that it will be the first hospital to perform the surgery, which could begin in the next few months.
The experimental surgery welcomes women who are of childbearing age but cannot get pregnant because of the absence of a uterus at birth or a damaged uterus — or any uterine abnormalities collectively known as Uterine Factor Infertility (UFI).
The hospital has already started screening for eligible participants since September, and these patients went through several medical and psychological evaluations in order to get approved.
Ten women will be the first set of patients to receive the experimental surgery before the procedure becomes available in the United States.
The hospital's statement mentioned that the donor organ will come from a deceased patient, and the recipient will receive a "temporary" uterus, allowing her to give birth to only one or two children.
If the procedure will be readily available in the country, it won't be the world's first. Sweden was the first country to have successfully completed the procedure at the University of Gothenburg, using an organ from a live donor.
Nine women in Sweden had the surgery and four already gave birth, with the first of them last September 2014.
"The exciting work from the investigators in Sweden demonstrated that uterine transplantation can result in the successful delivery of healthy infants," said lead investigator of the study, Andreas Tzakis, M.D.
Currently, women who suffer from UFI are given only a few options in order to have children — one is through surrogacy and the other is adoption.
Uterus transplants should give these women some hope of getting pregnant successfully, but this doesn't mean that the surgery won't come with risks, the same ones faced by those who go through other types of surgeries.
The women will also have a high-risk pregnancy and their fetuses will be exposed to the different immunosuppressive medications. But according to Cleveland Clinic, coordination from their team of experts and specialists should provide "the best possible outcomes for the patient."
