Woman gets a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells
Claudia Castillo, a 30-year old Colombian woman suffered from tuberculosis for years and needed regular hospital visits to clear her airways. After a severe collapse of her left lung, doctors thought they would have to remove the entire left lung.
Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of thoracic surgery at Barcelona's Hospital Clinic, proposed a windpipe transplant instead. Only a handful of windpipe transplants have ever been done, and transplants carry the risk that the body will reject the organ.
This surgery however, was the first transplant of a windpipe with tissue grown from the patient's own stem cells. Doctors took stem cells from Castillo's bone marrow to create cartilage and tissue cells to cover and line a donor's windpipe.
The procedure was done in June, and so far Castillo has shown no signs of rejection. She did not need to take any immune-suppressing drugs, which can cause side effects like high blood pressure, kidney failure and cancer. It may take up to three years to know that the windpipe's structure is solid and won't fall apart.
The results were published on The Lancet.
[Source: Doctors transplant windpipe with stem cells]
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