Linda De Croock has been living in pain and discomfort for over 2 ½ years after being in a car accident that smashed her windpipe. Doctors had to install two metal stents propping her windpipe to keep her stay alive.
Today, De Croock seems to be living a normal life again as doctors at Belgium’s University Hospital Leuven implanted a new windpipe replacing the damaged one.
“This is a major step forward for trachea transplantation,” said Dr. Pierre Delaere, the surgeon who led the team that treated De Croock.
What the doctors did was take the windpipe of a dead man, who was a suitable donor, and implanted it first into De Croock’s lower left arm where it was connected to a large artery to re-establish its blood supply as a first step in getting her body to accept the organ.
Ten months after, when enough tissues were growing normally around it and De Croocks had no longer need for anti-rejection drugs, the windpipe was transferred to its proper place.
Patrick Warnke, a tissue-engineering expert at Bond University in Australia, after hearing the success of De Croock’s case said: “This shows us that we may one day be able to use patients’ own bodies as bioreactors to grow their own tissue.”
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