Cancer Patient Receives Synthetic Trachea

A man whose windpipe was ravaged by cancer has become only the second person in the world to receive a synthetic trachea. The patient from Baltimore was operated by a team led by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, director of the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

The patient named Christopher Lyles received a trachea that was fashioned from microfibers of plastic shaped into a windpipe scaffold. This scaffold was saturated in a solution that contained stem cells harvested from the patient himself.

The doctors believe that the chances of rejection will be less with this trachea as it has been created by using the patient’s own stem cells. Lyles is only the second man to receive a synthetic trachea transplant after an Eritrean man in July 2011, who received a similar trachea after he lost his organ to cancer.

Source-Medindia