A Swedish woman recently gave birth to a baby boy using the first ever womb transplant! Say what? Yes, you heard that right, she had a womb transplant. This might sound crazy now, but like the heart, skin, and even hand transplants, it will probably soon be a standard procedure. Here are a few transplants that shocked and changed the world forever.

1. Womb Transplant

Here’s a bit more on that womb transplant. The 36-year-old Swedish mother was born without a uterus and received a donated womb from her sixty-something  year old friend and gave birth to a premature baby boy weighing 1.8kg. The transplant had been tried by two medical teams before and resulted in the womb having to be removed and a miscarriage.

2. Heart Transplant

Even though over 3,500 heart transplants are performed every year, this medical procedure is less than 50 years old. The first heart transplant was done on the most southern tip of Africa in a public hospital in Cape Town where Dr. Christiaan Barnard gave Louis Washkansky a brand new heart.

3. Hand Transplant

Imagine having someone else’s hand surgically attached to your arm. Well in Ecuador in 1964, that’s exactly what happened. Unfortunately after two weeks the patients body rejected the hand. Thirty five years later after many failed attempts, Matthew Scott was the first person to have long term success after he received a new hand after loosing his in a firework accident.

4. Skin Transplant 

Used to treat burn victims, extensive trauma, and skin cancer, a skin transplant or skin grafting is literally transferring skin from one person to another. This procedure serves two purposes: reduce the treatment needed and the patients time in the hospital, and improve the function and appearance of the area of the body which receives the skin graft.

5. Kidney Transplant

Can you believe the first kidney transplant was done 50 years ago? Dr. Harrison, Joseph E. Murray, John P. Merrill and others successfully performed a kidney transplant between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick in December 1954 at the Brigham Hospital.

6. Bone Marrow Transplant 

Also know as a hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), a bone marrow transplant is the transplantation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells which is usually derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood or umbilical cord blood. This procedure is most often performed on patients with certain cancers of the blood or bone marrow. Over 50,000 transplants happen each year.

7. Teeth Transplant 

Getting spinach in your teeth is bad enough, but imagine not having teeth. With modern medicine, you can now get a dental prosthetic in the shape and even colour of a missing tooth. Metal plates are inserted at the gum and the implant is put on top.

8. Hair Transplant 

Balding? Thinning hair? You can now get a hair transplant that will with give you a full head of hair. The procedure involves moving individual hair follicles from a part of the body called the ‘donor site’ to bald or balding part of the body known as the ‘recipient site’. There are however side effects including hair thinning which is usually temporary.

9. Face Transplant 

Sounds crazy, but its been done. A face transplant is a medical procedure to replace all or parts of a person’s face. The first full face transplant was completed in Spain in 2010.

10. Liver Transplant 

Most liver transplants occur due to liver disease. The first happened in 1963 by a surgical team led by Dr. Thomas Starzl, but it only had short term success. The results of this procedure have only been getting better over the years.

11. Cochlear Implant

While technically not a transplant, with over 350,000 people having received this man-made implant made of wire and magnets, it is truly amazing. The implant allows profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing people with an opportunity to hear. The quality of sound differs from natural hearing, with less sound information being received and processed by the brain. Unlike the baby above, you usually can’t see people wearing them as it is covered by hair. 

12. Lung Transplant

After several unsuccessful attempts and a few successful attempt on animals, the first human lung transplant was done on 11 June 1963 by James Hardy. After the transplant the patient was identified as convicted murderer John Richard Russell and only survived for 18 days.

13. Intestinal Transplant 

Intestinal transplants are one of the most challenging and least frequently performed organ transplants. Over the last one and a half decades, the procedure has significantly improved and the yearly number of transplants has steadily increasing.

14. Cornea Transplant 

The first cornea transplant was performed in 1905 by Eduard Zirm almost 100 years ago. This made it the first type of transplant surgery successfully performed. The transplant replaces damaged or diseased corneas with donated corneal tissue.

15. Penis Transplant 

This is a surgical transplant procedure in which a penis is transplanted to a patient. The penis can come from a human donor, or it may be grown artificially (the latter is untested on humans). The first successful procedure was performed in September 2006 in China on a 44-year-old male who lost most of his penis in an accident. The transplanted penis came from a brain-dead 22-year-old male.

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