Surgeons Perform First Human Tracheal Transplant Surgery

About 10 years ago, there was an Italian surgeon in Sweden who claimed to have a technique to use patient&#x27;s cells to seed a synthetic base structure for a trachea. But he was found out to have conducted research fraud.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paolo_Macchiarini" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paolo_Macchiarini</a>

These achievements never fail to make me emotional. The incredible amount of effort, risk tolerance, teamwork, and talent for all parties involved is humbling. Every one of these achievements feel to me as another version of landing on the moon.

&gt; The complex surgery involved a team of more than 50 specialists including surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, and residents<p>&gt; Their observations will inform the development of Mount Sinai’s Tracheal Transplant Program, enabling Dr. Genden to offer this therapeutic approach to patients nationwide and internationally<p>This is without a doubt an impressive achievement.<p>Can someone speak to the logistics of expanding this program though? I don&#x27;t suppose a 18 hour, 50 person procedure is in any way easy to coordinate, and I imagine it must be extremely expensive, both in terms of financial cost and time investment.<p>How feasible is it to propagate the expertise? Are there factors related to the novelty that make it attractive for other medical teams to invest time in training for this procedure? Is risk a deterrent in terms of insurance coverage?

Curious what effect this will have on their voice, and how they react to a new voice &#x27;sensation&#x27;. Will they recognize their own voice at first? Will they adapt? Might there be some psychological issues that stem from this? Are there other examples of someone&#x27;s voice changing (rapidly, assuming this does affect their voice) and what were the effects?

I really hope this is different from what Paolo Macchiarini was doing, where it seems most patients later died. One of the biggest scandals in Sweden.

I thought I&#x27;d read of 3D printed trachea but I just did a search and discovered the work is all still experimental.<p>There was also promising work on printing a biodegradable one that be used as a matrix or scaffold for growing a new one from the patient&#x27;s own cells. This sounds like a better one; though you could print a non-immune-triggering one, one made of the patient&#x27;s own cells would be more compliant (flexible) which I assume from taking animals apart is required for good breathing.

This sounds like quite a complex surgery with lots of staff, and also something new and novel. If someone here is a medical expert, I’m curious what happens if someone’s trachea is damaged significantly in some incident - is there currently no “emergency” treatment for that situation?

I’m curious to hear their new voice.

Why is my first thought I wonder how much that costs and not instantly wanting a potentially life saving or quality improvement?