Pune doctors perform country's first successful uterus transplant

Doctors at a Pune hospital successfully conducted India's first womb transplant, and reports said, the mother donor and recipient daughter from Solapur were ''doing fine'' in the morning today, 12 hours after the doctors conducted the procedure on Thursday.

The surgeons retrieved the uterus from the 40-yeqr-old woman using a laparoscopic technique, to shorten the duration of the procedure, and transferred to her 21-year-old daughter, bringing the time taken for the procedure down from normal 12 hours to nine.

India's first womb transplant by transferring a mother's uterus to her 21-year-old daughter, a doctor said both donor and recipient are stable and are doing fine on Friday morning.

Shailesh Puntambekar, medical director, Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute (GCLI), along with 11 other doctors conducted the woumb transplant from the mother to her daughter, who does not have a uterus.

It will take another 15 days for the doctors to assess whether the organ transplanted in the recipient's body is working properly, said Puntambekar.

"The surgery has been successful. The condition of the recipient and donor is stable. Another 48 hours will be crucial in determining the outcome the surgery," said oncosurgeon Shailesh Puntambekar.

The hospital has planned to conduct another womb transplant today on a 24-year-old woman from Baroda who suffers from Asherman's Syndrome (scar tissue in the uterus) and will receive her mother's womb.

''We plan to conduct the next transplant today at 1 pm,'' said Puntambekar.

The first two womb transplants are being done free although the cost of the procedure is around Rs7-8 lakh, according to the hospital.

The new surgical procedure has opened up another way to motherhood besides surrogacy or adoption for Indian women who do not have a uterus.