PO BAG 1: transplant

7 October 2016

How a patient's 'crazy' request for a new womb made history

In this photo taken Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, professor Mats Brannstrom talks about the revolutionary womb transplant he led that links three generations of a Swedish family at Stockholm IVF fertility clinic in Stockholm, Sweden. Brannstrom has made medical history by becoming the first doctor to deliver babies, five so far, from women with donated wombs, in a stunning advance that could lead to new insights into reproductive medicine and beyond.

When the young Australian cervical cancer patient learned she had to lose her womb in order to survive, she proposed something audacious to the doctor who was treating her: She asked if she could have a womb transplant, so she could one day carry her own baby.

This was nearly two decades ago, when the Swedish doctor Mats Brannstrom was training to be a physician abroad.

"I thought she was a bit crazy," Brannstrom said.

7 September 2016

Frenchwoman who got world's 1st face transplant dies at 49

In this Feb. 6, 2006 file photo, Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses reporters during her first press conference since the transplant at the Amiens hospital, northern France. The 38-year-old woman was mauled by a dog, leaving her with severe facial injuries that her doctors said made it difficult for her to speak and eat. Dinoire who received the world’s first partial face transplant has died, 11 years after surgery that set the stage for dozens of other transplants around the world.

Isabelle Dinoire, a Frenchwoman who received the world's first partial face transplant, has died more than a decade after a complex and daring operation that set the stage for dozens of similar transplants worldwide. She was 49.

Her life with a new face was a miracle to many, but was also marred by infections, kidney trouble and hypertension linked to her treatment. In announcing her death Tuesday, the Amiens University Hospital in northern France said Dinoire's experience "illustrates perfectly the high stakes of face transplants."