Indian doctor plans world first womb transplant into trans woman
9 May 2022, 15:33 | Updated: 9 May 2022, 15:48
An Indian doctor is planning the world's first womb transplant into a transgender woman who was born a male.
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Dr Narendra Kaushik, from New Delhi, will perform the experimental surgery at his gender reassignment practice, the Olmec Clinic, in the Indian capital.
The organ will come from either a dead donor or from a woman who has had their womb removed in their process of becoming a man.
The operation, which could become the first successful surgery of its kind, could pave the way for people that were born male to have children through IVF.
The surgery was performed on a transgender woman once before, but the woman died from complications only months after the operation.
However, Dr Kaushik has said he is "very, very optimistic" he can make a success of the surgery declined to name the recipient or detail the timeline for the operation.
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Dr Kaushik told the Mirror: "Every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible and that includes being a mother. The way towards this with a uterine transplant, the same as a kidney or any other transplant.
"This is the future. We cannot predict exactly when this will happen but it will happen very soon. We have our plans and we are very very optimistic about this."
He said his clinic is at the centre of a booming industry in New Delhi set to rival Bangkok for sex-change surgery and boasted that 20 per cent of his clientele are international, with many from the UK.
Womb transplants cost about £50,000 while IVF costs more than £5,000 per cycle of treatment.
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Dr Kaushik said: "Many of our patients tell us that their sexual partners don't even notice that they weren't born with female sex organs.
"That's our aim, to make it so that they live as normal a life as possible as a woman. We aim for an aesthetic ideal."
The transplanted womb cannot be connected to fallopian tubes so the operation does not lead to the person becoming pregnant naturally.
But it is thought a trans woman could be impregnated through IVF and possible give birth naturally, following a successful womb transplant.
