Turkish womb transplant woman's pregnancy terminated

Doctors have terminated the pregnancy of a 23-year-old Turkish woman who was the first ever to receive a uterus transplant from a dead donor, a hospital in southern Turkey said on Tuesday.

"Derya Sert's pregnancy ... has been terminated after an eight-week check because the embryo's heartbeat could not be established," doctors at Akdeniz University Hospital in the southern province of Antalya said in a statement.

Sert was the first to receive a uterus transplanted from a dead woman.

The first transplant with a live donor was carried out in 2000 in Saudi Arabia. However, doctors had to remove the organ after 99 days following heavy clotting.

Sert was born without a uterus, like one in every 5,000 women around the world, and doctors waited 18 months before implanting the embryo to make sure the foreign organ was still functioning.

© 2013 AFP