First Baby In US Born To Mother Who Received Uterus From Deceased Donor

(CBS DETROIT/CNN) -- In a first for the United States, a clinic has delivered a healthy baby from the transplanted uterus of a deceased donor.

It's a promising development in reproductive options for women who are infertile due to uterine problems, according to the research team behind the delivery.

The girl was born in June via cesarean section to a patient in her mid-30s, said the Cleveland Clinic, which performed the transplantation and birth.

The patient was born without a uterus and entered the clinic's trial for women with uterine factor infertility, said Dr. Tommaso Falcone, a member of the transplant team. Women with this condition either are born without an intact uterus or have had uterine damage through an infection, procedure or hysterectomy.

The unnamed patient elected to remove the transplanted uterus after the birth, he said.

"This was always a question mark that required research," he said. "But this goes to the idea that a deceased donor can give her uterus, and it will function amazingly well."

The process took 15 months

It's the second time that physicians have delivered a baby from a woman with a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor. The first occurred in 2017 in a Brazilian trial involving a 32-year-old woman born without a womb who received a uterine transplant from a 45-year-old woman who'd died of a stroke.

The Cleveland Clinic trial accepts donor uteruses only from premenopausal women, ages 18 to 40, though Falcone noted that the uteruses of living postmenopausal women have been successfully transplanted in separate trials.

The process for this patient took about 15 months from transplantation to birth, he said. Her pregnancy was "not excessively complicated," and she was able to leave the hospital within three days of her C-section.

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