A 38-year-old infertile woman from London is about to set a record by becoming the first woman to give birth following a full ovary transplant to result in a successful pregnancy.

The woman was declared sterile when her ovaries stopped producing hormones when she was 15 and went through menopause while still in her teens. In a revolutionary new procedure she became pregnant just over a year after receiving a donor ovary from her identical twin sister.

The transplant technique works on twins with limited applications amongst the others as a transplanted ovary would produce genetically different eggs. For the people who do not have a twin there is an alternative of an IVF with donor eggs. This procedure can also be done with an ovary removed and frozen prior to cancer treatment such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy and could stand to benefit almost 100,000 British women who have gone through an early menopause, as well as those whose fertility is impaired by cancer treatment.

Dr Sherman Silber at the Infertility Centre of St Louis in Missouri carried out the treatment last year. He has specialized in transplants between identical twins, because there is a very low risk of rejection by organs.

The surgical team used keyhole surgery to remove one of the ovaries of her twin sister who has two children. As both women are genetically identical, eggs from the donor ovary are equivalent to those produced by the patient herself.

Microsurgery to reconnect blood vessels as small as half a millimeter in diameter was undertaken and three months post surgery , the patient had her first period in 22 years, indicating that she was ovulating normally again. After five months she had hormone levels the same as her sister and as a result of the increased hormone production, the osteoporosis she had been suffering improved. A year after the transplant, the woman found she was pregnant.

Silber is to present his results tomorrow at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine's annual meeting in San Francisco. "To our knowledge, this is the first successful human intact whole ovary transplant leading to healthy pregnancy," said Silber.

Dr Silber said, 'Reconnecting these blood vessels deep inside the pelvis can be a tactical challenge. The ovarian artery is less than a third of a millimetre in diameter - in fact so small many gynaecologists have never seen it.'

"This sets the stage for a new chapter in reproductive organ transplantation," said Silber. "In addition to whole ovary transplantation it is possible now to consider fallopian tube transplant for women with irreparable tubal disease."

Dr Silber has also discovered that while an average of only one per cent of all women go through the menopause before 40, five per cent of female twins - a rate five times as high and makes his pioneering new procedure particularly relevant to them.