A 2-year-old girl born in South Korea without a windpipe now has a new one grown from her own stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.
She has been unable to breathe, eat, drink or swallow on her own since she was born in 2010. Until the operation at a central Illinois hospital, she had spent her entire life in a hospital in Seoul where doctors told her parents it is no hope and she was expected to die.
The stem cells derived from Hannah's bone marrow, extracted with a special needle inserted into her hip bone. They were cultivated in a lab onto a plastic scaffold, where it took less than a week for them to multiply and create a new windpipe.
About the size of a 3-inch tube of penne pasta, it was transplanted April 9 in a nine-hour procedure.
Early signs indicate the windpipe is working but she was still relying on on a ventilator. But doctors believe she will eventually be able to live at home and lead a normal life.
Only about one in 50,000 children worldwide are born in defect of the windpipe . The stem-cell technique has been used to make other body parts besides windpipes and holds promise for treating other birth defects and childhood diseases, her doctors said.
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