TWO women have been given hope of having children after surgeons in Sweden performed the world's first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants.

In what was described as an ''exciting'' breakthrough, the two unnamed Swedish women, both in their 30s, received wombs from their mothers.

A team of more than 10 surgeons from Gothenburg University completed the pioneering procedures ''without complications'' following several years of training.

The women will wait a year for the wombs to settle before doctors attempt to implant embryos. Both have already undergone IVF and the resultant embryos are being stored in deep-freeze.

One of the daughters had her uterus removed many years ago when undergoing surgery for cervical cancer, while the other was born without the organ.

Should the pregnancies be successful, the women will give birth to babies who are genetically their own, after the doctors took eggs from their functioning ovaries.

Michael Olausson, one of the surgeons, said: ''We are not going to call it a complete success until this results in children.'' The university has decided to keep the identities of the four women a secret for now.

One of the two recipients, identified only as Anna, said she realised some may criticise the operation on ethical grounds but that it simply meant restoring a bodily function she was deprived of by cancer.

''It feels huge to be able to experience this,'' she said in comments on the website of the Sahlgrenska hospital in western Sweden. She said there were still no guarantees she and her boyfriend would conceive.

Should the women give birth it would mark a new chapter in the remarkable story of fertility treatment, said Professor Simon Fishel, a leading IVF specialist from Britain.

''This is exciting for a group of women who require surrogate mothers to have children due to womb defects or having no womb at all,'' he said.

Gothenburg University says 2000 women aged 20 to 40 in Sweden could benefit from womb transplantation.

However, Professor Fishel said there was still a long way to go before the technique was shown to work. A transplanted womb could be rejected or develop blood clots that required its removal.

That is what happened to a 26-year-old woman in Saudi Arabia in 2000, three months after receiving the world's first womb transplant, from a 46-year-old living donor.

There has been no news from a Turkish hospital that gave a 21-year-old woman a womb from a recently deceased donor in August last year.

Although the mothers of the Swedish recipients are likely to be in their 50s or 60s, Professor Fishel said the wombs of older women had been found to function well enough to bear healthy children.

Mats Brannstrom, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Gothenburg University, said he had been working on the project since 1999. He assembled a team to demonstrate the technique first on animals.

They succeeded on mice and larger animals, before trying on baboons. The transplant was a success but the baboon has yet to grow a baby successfully.

Liza Johannesson, a gynaecological surgeon, said human womb transplantation was ''easier'' than in baboons. TELEGRAPH