Hannah Warren is a Korean-Canadian toddler, two and a half years old, was born without a windpipe or trachea, this made her live since birth in a newborn intensive care unit in a Korean hospital, breathing through a tube inserted in her mouth and develop other problems in her eating and speaking.
Hannah was the first in the United States, sixth ever, and youngest patient in the world to receive a bioengineered organ, in which doctors have used plastic fibers and human cells to build and implant a windpipe in a nine-hour operation by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini at Children’s Hospital of Illinois.
The goal of regenerative medicine, or tissue engineering, is to create or regrow tissues and organs to ease transplant shortages or treat conditions that do not have an effective cure, which can give many possibilities of a better lifestyle to many patients. Today Hannah is getting better and she is breathing largely on her own, although through a hole in her neck, her doctors say she is improving every day.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/science/groundbreaking-surgery-for-girl-born-without-windpipe.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130430&_r=1
