The world's first transplant of a synthetic windpipe has been successfully carried out by a team of surgeons. On June 9, 2011 a 36-year-old man suffering from late stage tracheal cancer, received a new trachea, or windpipe, made from a synthetic scaffold and covered with his own stem cells at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.

The synthetic trachea had been used as a last possible option, according to the team, since the man's tumour, despite radiation treatment had grown so large it was threatening to block his entire windpipe and there was no suitable donor available.

The so-called regenerative medical procedure could, according to the hospital, revolutionise the field of trachea transplants, making them far more accessible. Transplantations of tissue engineered windpipes with synthetic scaffolds in combination with the patient's own stem cells as a standard procedure means that patients will not have to wait for a suitable donor organ.