America's first trachea transplant has been performed on a 56-year-old woman from the Bronx in New York City. Doctors say this drastic operation could potentially help other people including COVID-19 patients left with serious windpipe damage from breathing machines and former smokers. Sonia Sein, 56, became the first person in the U.S. to receive a trachea transplant - and it may be a world first. Several surgeries to reconstruct her windpipe didn't help and left Sein in despair at constant risk of suffocation. Sein's trachea transplant took 18 hours and was performed at Mount Sinai in New York in JanuaryAnd these methods are not possible in the most dire situations where a patient's entire windpipe is damaged.

Source: The Nation April 06, 2021 19:52 UTC