The modern era of uterus transplantation (UTx) started around the millennium shift, with research activities by the Swedish team lead by Dr. Brännström and the UK/USA team led by Mr. Smith and Dr. DelPriore. Soon thereafter (April, 2000), the first human UTx case was performed, by the team of Dr Fageeh from Saudi Arabia. The case was announced in 2002 by a research paper in International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. This case sparked the interest in UTx-related research at several research centers around the world and the animal-based research came to include a number of species with studied that examined many aspects of UTx. Thus, experiments in mouse, rat, rabbit, pig, sheep, baboon and macaque shed light on important issues such as surgical technique, immunosuppression, and detection of rejection and outcome of pregnancies in a transplanted uterus. Importantly, ethical issues around UTx were also discussed in several papers.
The first pregnancy after UTx in the human was announced in 2013 and in September 2014, the first live birth was reported.
Uterus transplantation has its scientific and clinical base in several specialties (gynecology, transplantation surgery, immunology, maternal-fetal medicine, nephrology and transplantation medicine, reconstructive surgery, reproductive medicine, pathology, psychology and) and it was far from obvious that the UTx-field yet could easily be incorporated into a certain major international scientific organization. At a meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden in January 2016 around 70 clinical doctors and scientists (founding members), with special interest in UTx came together to form the International Society of Uterus Transplantation (ISUTx). In consensus it was decided to start an independent society and that the main activities in the beginning would be formation of a compulsory UTx registry and that a scientific congress would be arranged annually. An interim executive committee was formed to carry on the administration and activities before the election of a board in conjunction with the first ISUTx meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, 2017.
The first congress of ISUTx was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, September 18-19th. At that meeting around 140 delegates from all continents met to share data from their clinical and research experiences. The ISUTx was also officially formed and the Board of Directors (15 members) was elected. It was decided that congresses of ISUTx would be held every second year (uneven years) and that State-of-the-Art ISUTx meetings would be in-between (even years).
