A British woman who had been told she was infertile after undergoing chemotherapy has given birth to a son - described by doctors as a medical first - British newspapers reported on Thursday.

Now 21 with a one-year-old boy, the unnamed woman was diagnosed with bone cancer seven years ago but made a complete recovery after chemotherapy and radiotherapy, going through the menopause and receiving hormone replacement before conceiving.

“It was quite a remarkable event, something unpredictable, and we were wonderfully surprised,” consultant paediatric oncologist Dr Hamish Wallace, who treated the woman at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, was quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

“This may have been happened before but it is the first documented case,” added Wallace. “On several occasions there was clear evidence of ovarian failure but still the patient went on to conceive naturally and have a healthy baby.”

In September, Belgian woman Ouarda Touirat was reported to have become the first woman to have had a baby after receiving an ovarian tissue transplant, a medical breakthrough that gives hope to other female cancer sufferers who want to have children after becoming infertile.

Doctors removed part of her ovarian tissue, froze it and re-implanted it six years later once she was cured and wanted to have a baby.

But Dr Wallace was quoted by the Times newspaper as saying the British case showed doctors in Belgium could not be certain Touirat’s child had developed from one of the frozen eggs.