The UK Womb Transplant Programmes and Procedure

  • The objective of our research is to establish whether Womb Transplants are a viable form of fertility treatment for the NHS for women suffering from absolute uterine infertility.
  • The UK Womb Transplant Team have permissions for two programmes:

5 patients with live related donors and 10 patients seeking donated wombs  from deceased donors

  • All patients are UK residents, eligible for NHS Care and are between the ages of 24 and 40 (or 42 if embryos have been cryopreserved before the age of 38)
  • All patients will have at least five healthy embryos cryopreserved awaiting implantation
  • The operation to retrieve a womb takes between 6-8 hours with a team of up to 5 surgeons
  • The operation to transplant a womb takes between 6-8 hours with a team of up to 5 surgeons
  • Patients receiving a womb may stay under close observation is hospital for up to two weeks after their operation
  • Immuno-suppression medicine is given to patients immediately following the transplant and very closely monitored post operatively
  • Live donors have a three to five day hospital stay
  • Transplant patients receive close monitoring initially with twice weekly then weekly follow up for several months and if their womb is functioning normally, will have an embryo implanted from 6 months post op.
  • Once a patient is pregnant, close monitoring of the patient and foetus continues.
  • At 37 weeks the baby is delivered by Caesarean Section
  • If all is well the patient can choose for try for a second child or to have her transplanted womb removed
  • After having a second child, the transplanted womb is removed (hysterectomy) and the patient stops taking immunosuppression medicine.