April 10, 2018.
A team of doctors from Gustave Roussy, Necker Hospital and Marie Lannelongue Hospital, managed to completely reconstruct a child’s trachea using tissue taken from her ribs and back.
A first for children
A twelve-year-old child underwent a complete reconstruction of the trachea, obtained from her own tissue. This is a great first for children. This surgical feat was recounted in detail in the review New English Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Doctors used tissue taken from the ribs and back of the child, who suffered from a congenital narrowing of the trachea.
This narrowing was due to a rare disease: congenital tracheobronchial stenosis. An illness that made her breathing more and more complicated and that put her life in danger. ” Three medical teams (head and neck, cardiothoracic, and plastic surgery) collaborated to achieve this complete replacement of the trachea », Can we read in the scientific journal. A successful collaboration.
An artificial trachea
In detail, the doctors made an artificial trachea using a flap of a muscle from his back, which they covered with skin and made solid with pieces of cartilage taken from his ribs. The device was initially held by a silicone cylinder which was removed 9 days after the operation. The latter was carried out in 2014. 4 years later, the young patient is in good health.
The real feat is that she breathes naturally and that, thanks to this surgical intervention, she was able to do without a tracheotomy. This is an incision in the trachea into which a tube open to the outside is inserted. The tracheostomy had been kept for 2 years as a precaution but it could be removed. This surgical feat will most certainly be imitated and repeated.
Marine Rondot
