Hannah receives a visit from her parents at the Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria after receiving a new windpipe using her own adult stem cells.
A South Korean-Canadian toddler has been given a life-saving windpipe transplant made from plastic fibres and some of her own stem cells.
Hannah Warren, aged two, was born without a trachea and is now the youngest person to ever receive a bio-engineered organ, after an operation in the United States.
She had spent her life in an intensive care unit in Seoul, with a feeding tube keeping her alive. Doctors had initially given Hannah little chance of surviving.
The nine-hour transplant was a life-saving surgery for the child, who was unable to breathe, speak, swallow, eat or drink on her own since birth.
Because the procedure used stem cells from her own bone marrow rather than a donor organ, her immune system is unlikely to reject the transplant. Doctors said she could return home and lead a normal life within months.
“The most amazing thing, which for this little girl is a miracle, is that this transplant has not only saved her life, but it will eventually enable her to eat, drink and swallow, even talk, just like any other normal child,” said lead surgeon Paolo Macchiarini of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“She will go from being a virtual prisoner in a hospital bed to running around and playing with her sister and enjoying a normal life, which is a beautiful thing.”
Scientists hope the stem cell-based therapy will diminish reliance on human organ donors and the associated risks of immune system suppression.
“We are crossing frontiers with these transplants,” Macchiarini said in a statement.
