After being the first French woman to benefit from a uterus transplant, Deborah gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby last Friday.

The technique gives rise to immense hope in women without a uterus.

Europe 1 tells you behind the scenes of this medical feat. 

The birth of a little girl weighing 1.8 kilograms last Friday at the Foch hospital in Suresnes, in Hauts-de-Seine, has something to give heart to many women.

Indeed, the mother had benefited from a uterus transplant.

Her childbirth, almost two years later, is a small miracle, even if it is not completely new. 

A not so exceptional pathology

The mother, Deborah, 36, was indeed born without a uterus.

This anomaly, soberly called "Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome", is not so exceptional since it nevertheless concerns one in 4,500 women.

For women with this peculiarity and wishing to have a child, the only reasonable option until then was adoption.

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But on March 31, 2019, Deborah received the first uterus transplant performed in France.

Her own mother, herself menopausal at 57, donated the organ removed through robotic surgery.

Once implanted in Deborah, the young woman had to wait a few months to be sure not to be rejected.

Finally, in 2020 thanks to

in vitro

fertilization

, she got pregnant to finally give birth to her daughter.

Twenty "miracle babies" around the world

While this operation is remarkable in many ways, it is not unprecedented.

In 2014, the Swedes were the first to achieve the feat.

The Americans, Indians and Brazilians followed suit.

This "miracle baby", born in Suresnes, therefore joins the twenty or so children around the world born from this medical feat.

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A uterus transplant can affect both women born without this organ and those from whom it has been removed.

Some forms of cancer can indeed require removal of the uterus.

Combined with immunosuppressive treatment, it can help to consider pregnancy.

At present, specialists believe that there is nothing to prevent a woman having received a transplant having several children.

But this type of transplant is still temporary, in particular because of the anti-rejection treatment.

The technique is in its infancy, but it still gives a lot of hope.