A New York woman is looking forward to the future with her family after receiving the first trachea transplant
After years of struggling to breathe and fearing she might suffocate in her sleep, Sonia Sein says she feels well enough to dance around with her grandchildren after undergoing the first-ever human trachea transplant at Mount Sinai in New York.
“For me, it felt like right after, I was able to breathe. When I took that first breath it was heaven,” said Sein, who had the life-changing surgery in January.
The 56-year-old former social worker’s trachea was damaged in 2014 when she had to go on a ventilator because of a bad asthma attack.
After years of struggling to breathe and fearing she might suffocate in her sleep, Sonia Sein says she feels well enough to dance around with her grandchildren after undergoing the first-ever human trachea transplant at Mount Sinai in New York. For me, it felt like right after, I was able to breathe. When I took that first breath it was heaven, said Sein, who had the life-changing surgery in January. The 56-year-old former social worker s trachea was damaged in 2014 when she had to go on a ventilator because of a bad asthma attack. Sein went through multiple surgeries in hopes of correcting the problem, but that caused even more damage to her airway. She breathed through a surgically created hole in her neck called a tracheostomy and had a long tube that ran down to her lungs.
Apr 7, 2021
NEW YORK (AP) Sonia Sein said she spent the last six years “trying to catch every breath at every moment” after extensive treatment for her severe asthma damaged her windpipe.
She is breathing freely again after getting an unusual transplant. In January, doctors at New York’s Mount Sinai replaced her trachea, the tube that ferries air from the mouth to the lungs.
Doctors say this drastic operation could potentially help other people including COVID-19 patients left with serious windpipe damage from breathing machines.
“We’ve talked for 100 years about just putting in a new windpipe,” said University of Washington surgeon Dr. Albert Merati, who had no role in the recent transplant.
Woman thriving after first-of-its-kind transplant 01:33 (CNN)After years of struggling to breathe and fearing she might suffocate in her sleep, Sonia Sein says she feels well enough to dance around with her grandchildren after undergoing the first-ever human trachea transplant at Mount Sinai in New York. For me, it felt like right after, I was able to breathe. When I took that first breath it was heaven, said Sein, who had the life-changing surgery in January.
The 56-year-old former social worker s trachea was damaged in 2014 when she had to go on a ventilator because of a bad asthma attack.
Sein went through multiple surgeries in hopes of correcting the problem, but that caused even more damage to her airway. She breathed through a surgically created hole in her neck called a tracheostomy and had a long tube that ran down to her lungs.
Experts say it’s too soon to deem Sein s transplant a total success which UNOS said is the first of its kind in the U.S. Sein has to take powerful drugs to prevent organ rejection, but doctors hope to try to wean her off in a few years. Less than three months after the operation, there haven t been complications or signs of rejection.
“If it was going to be a failure, we would know by now. It’s quite promising,” said Dr. Alec Patterson, a transplant surgeon at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the operation. It’s a major step forward.”