A woman of 29 being treated for cervical cancer had one of her ovaries removed and then implanted into her arm, doctors reported yesterday. The operation – the first successful “auto-transplant” of its kind – meant that the patient, from Surinam in South America, avoided being made menopausal by her radiation treatment.Dr Carina Hilders and a team at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, moved the woman’s left ovary to her left arm at the same time that they attempted to remove the cancer by a full hysterectomy.After the five hour 20 minute operation the ovary in her arm - about the size of a table tennis ball - carried on secreting hormones into her blood in a normal monthly cycle, so she was not menopausal, the team reported yesterday in the journal Cancer.
