World's first child windpipe transplant at British hospital
World's first windpipe transplant in a child carried out at British hospital
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By Darren Estwick. |  |
Saturday, 20, Mar 2010 12:57
By Sarah Garrod.
An operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London by British and Italian doctors has become a 'world first'.
Doctors have successfully transplanted a new airway, the trachea, into a young boy, using his own stem cells to rebuild it.
The pioneering surgery means that the British boy, who has not been identified, will not require drugs to prevent his body from rejecting the new organ. He has become the first child to undergo a windpipe transplant with an organ created from his own stem cells.
Doctors at GOSH say the boy is doing well following the nine-hour operation, and is breathing normally. The hospital said that a donated trachea was stripped of the donor's old cells, down to the inert collagen. The child recipient's bone marrow stem cells were then collected, and applied to the graft in situ in the body, to rebuild the cellular component of the trachea. Thus the child's own cells will be used to make the new airway sealed and effective.
In a statement, GOSH said: "This is the first time that this has been performed in a child. It is also the first time the entire length of the trachea has been transplanted.
"The application of this technology should reduce greatly the risk of rejection of the new trachea, as the child's stem cells will not generate any immune response."
The child suffers from Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis, meaning he has a tiny windpipe that will not grow - doctors say it is like breathing through a straw and is a life threatening condition.