2-year-old girl gets windpipe made from stem cells
Source: USA TODAY News (AP)
CHICAGO (AP) A 2-year-old girl born 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.
Hannah Warren has been unable to breathe, eat, drink or swallow on her own since she was born in South Korea in 2010. Until the operation at a U.S. hospital, she had spent her entire life in a hospital in Seoul. Doctors there told her parents there was no hope and they expected her to die.
The stem cells came from Hannah's bone marrow, extracted with a special needle inserted into her hip bone. They were seeded in a lab onto a plastic scaffold, where it took less than a week for them to multiply and create a new windpipe.
The windpipe was implanted April 9 in a nine-hour procedure.
Early signs indicate the windpipe is working, Hannah's doctors announced Tuesday, although she is still on a ventilator. They believe she will eventually be able to live at home and lead a normal life.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/30/girl-windpipe-stem-cells/2123881/
Journeyman
(15,023 posts)Javaman
(62,497 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Ian David
(69,059 posts)marshall
(6,665 posts)The really promising application of stem cell technology isn't coming from fetal stem cells, but from individuals' own stem cells, as in this case.
Still, it makes good fodder for the choice/anti-choice argument.
babylonsister
(171,029 posts)Occulus
(20,599 posts)No, really,
bitchkitty
(7,349 posts)that one day I will have a brand new liver?