Surgeons in Belgium have pioneered an operation to replace the windpipe of a woman whose own windpipe was crushed in a car crash 25 years ago.

Sky News reports that Linda de Croock existed with two stents inserted in her damaged windpipe, and had been in constant pain and discomfort since the accident.

She found Dr Pierre Delaere at Belgium University Hospital using the Internet, who had carried out similar procedures on cancer patients. Dr Delaere and colleagues agreed to locate a donor trachea for Ms de Croock – and prepare it for implant in her body by growing it inside her own arm.

Once a donor organ had been found, Dr Delaere wrapped it in Ms de Croock’s own tissue and implanted it into her arm, connecting it to a major artery to re-establish blood flow.

Ms de Croock’s arm was put in plaster, an experience she said felt ‘strange and uncomfortable’.

However, after 10 months Ms de Croock’s own tissue had grown round the arm in sufficient quantities to allow her to stop taking drugs that prevent the body rejecting donor organs. At this stage the trachea was implanted into Ms de Croock’s throat.

Doctors say that the method used to ‘acclimatise’ the organ to Ms de Croock’s own body could pave the way for new ways of growing donor organs for transplant within the patient’s own body. It is the first time an organ as large as the trachea has been prepared for transplant in this way.

Tissue-engineering specialist Patrick Warnke from Bond University in Australia said that the methods used by the team in Belgium could herald new innovations in the field of organ transplantation:

‘This shows us that we may one day be able to use patients' own bodies as bioreactors to grow their own tissue,’ he said.

Dr Delaere said that the technique he pioneered for Ms de Croock’s transplant operation represented ‘a major step forward for trachea transplantation’.

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