Lindsey still has some time before she can get pregnant, at least one year, if not more. “A uterine transplant is not just about moving a uterus from here to there. It’s about having a healthy baby,” Dr. Rebecca Flyckt, an ob/gyn surgeon at Cleveland Clinic, said at the news conference. “That goal is still a couple of years away.”
Lindsey had six to 10 of her eggs harvested, fertilized with her husband’s sperm, and frozen. After a year, these embryos will be implanted in her transplanted uterus, and she hopes to give birth by cesarean delivery nine months later.
After that, she can wait a year and try to have another child. After two pregnancies, the transplanted uterus will be removed or allowed to wither and disappear on its own, her doctors said.
Embryo transplants are used in this process because the fallopian tubes, which carry a fertilized egg to the uterus, are missing.
The doctors said they are putting a limit on how long the uterus remains in the body because women have to take powerful drugs to prevent the body from rejecting the uterus, and they do not want women to have to take these drugs their entire life.
Although this is the first U.S. uterus transplant, the technique was pioneered in Sweden. As of last September, nine transplants have been performed, resulting in five pregnancies and four births. The children born to these women are all doing well, the Cleveland Clinic researchers said during the news conference.
For more on uterus transplants, visit the Cleveland Clinic.
