Stem Cell Surgery Used to Rebuild a 10-Year-Old Boy’s Windpipe
The British and Italian surgeons at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London may have achieved a major breakthrough after nearly nine hour long surgery. They took a 10-year-old boy’s bone marrow stem cells, injected them into a windpipe of a donor and implanted the boy with the windpipe stripped off its cells. The implanted stem cells are expected to differentiate into the windpipe cells within the boy’s body and not to be rejected by the boy’s immune system because they originate from his own tissue. The boy who has not been named is the first child to receive stem cell organ therapy, while the surgeons replaced the longest airway ever. If successful, the procedure will most likely result in a revolution in the field of regenerative medicine and lead to replacement of other organs such as larynx and esophagus by using stem cell treatment.
The 10-year-old boy was born with a life-threatening condition known as long segment tracheal stenosis and was not able to breath due to tiny windpipe measuring only one millimeter in diameter. He received different treatments but his condition worsened. For that reason the boy’s doctors turned for help to Professor Paolo Macchiarini from the Careggi University Hospital in Florence. Macchiarini performed the first transplantation of an organ created from stem cells on an adult woman in Spain two years ago.
Cardiothoracic surgeon and director of tracheal services at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Professor Martin Elliott says the boy is feeling extremely well after the surgery which took place on Monday, March 15. Elliott also said the boy is recovering well, breathing and speaking completely on his own, and saying that he is breathing a lot easier.
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