Medical history has been made in Spain.
Doctors say a young woman who received the world's first tailor-made Trachea Transplant, using her own stem cells, is recovering faster than expected.
Engineered transplant organ in Barcelona, Spain, the operation was performed in June on a Colombian woman whose trachea was destroyed by tuberculosis.
The medical team found a donor, then used the woman's bone marrow stem cells to seed the outside of the donor trachea.
When the new trachea was grafted onto the patient, her body's immune system accepted the new part without the use of drugs to prevent organ rejection.
The doctor who performed the transplant calls the operation a medical milestone.
Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of Thoracic Surgery said, "I think it's a major achievement in the history of medicine, but especially for the patient, because as a young lady and a young mother she was unable to do her mother duties and her social work, and family work. And now she's able to do it without expecting, long-term, any significant compromise of this situation, and of the implanted graft."
The success of this operation raises the possibility that other organs could be transplanted in the future without the use of drugs to dampen the immune system.
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