LONDON -- Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs.

Surgery Makes History

"This technique has great promise," said Dr. Eric Genden, who did a similar transplant in 2005 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. That operation used both donor and recipient tissue. Only a handful of windpipe, or trachea, transplants have ever been done.

If successful, the procedure could become a new standard of treatment, said Genden, who was not involved in the research.

The results were published online Wednesday in the medical journal, The Lancet.

The transplant was given in June to Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian mother of two living in Barcelona, who suffered from tuberculosis for years -- undaignosed for four years. After a severe collapse of her left lung in March, Castillo needed regular hospital visits to clear her airways and was unable to take care of her children.

She underwent an operation on the upper part of the trachea, but nothing could be done to repair the blockage in the left lung.

Doctors initially thought the only solution was to remove the entire left lung. But Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of thoracic surgery at Barcelona's Hospital Clinic, proposed a windpipe transplant instead.

Additional Resources:

• The Lancet: Article Summary
• The Lancet: Comment Excerpt
• News Release Outlines Procedure