Woman gets first trachea transplant without drugs

When I saw the headline, I momentarily thought they meant she had surgery w/o anesthesia!

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre4ai034-us-transplant/

By Michael KahnPosted 2008/11/18 at 7:16 pm EST

LONDON, Nov. 18, 2008 (Reuters) — A Colombian woman has received the world's first tailor-made trachea transplant, grown by seeding a donor organ with her own stem cells to prevent her body rejecting it, an international research team reported on Wednesday.

The success of the operation, performed in June using tissue generated from the woman's own bone marrow, raises the prospect that transplanting other organs may be possible without drugs to dampen the immune system, they said.

Doctors work hard to match tissue type when transplanting organs so that the body does not completely reject the new organ, but patients usually have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives.

"The probability this lady will have a rejection is almost zero percent," Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of thoracic surgery at the Hospital Clinic, Barcelona who performed the transplant, told a news conference.

"The patient is enjoying a normal life with no signs of rejection after four months."