43-Year-Old Woman Undergoes World’s First Tracheal Transplant in Kochi

Kochi-based Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Center has performed the first phase of tracheal transplant in woman suffering from cancer.This tracheal transplant is said to be the world’ s first successful one whereas Belgium surgeons have already tried it once which resulted in the death of the transplanted patient after four months.

A 43-year-old woman was suffering from tracheal cancer called adenoid cystic carcinoma, where the only solution for her was transplantation. The procedure known as tracheal homograft is a highly complex technique. The patient had breathing difficulty due to a slow-growing tumor in her trachea. The surgery was done by a team of pulmonologists led by Dr. Subramanya Iyer, head of plastic and reconstruction surgery.

Doctors performed the transplantation in two stages. In the first stage, the trachea from a brain-dead donor was embedded in the recipient’s forearm after removing all the cells that cause graft rejection.

In the second stage, the vascularized trachea will be removed from the forearm after two months and once it has taken new blood vessels and become viable, the new trachea in the forearm will be harvested along with its blood vessels to replace the diseased trachea.

The First stage took about 12 hours for the doctors and they said that the success of the procedure can be made sure only after the second stage.

Source-Medindia