Youngest girl to receive rare surgery from own stem cells dies 3 months later

Hannah Warren, the two-year-old girl who was born with a rare disease called tracheal agenesis and received a breakthrough surgery three months ago, died on July 6.

Hannah, who was born in Seoul, was the youngest patient to ever endure this uncommon nine-hour surgery. At her birth she was blue in the face because she did not have a trachea, making it impossible to breathe, eat, or speak on her own.

Her parents, Darryl, a Canadian who was teaching English in South Korea and her mother, a native of South Korea, worked with doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria to get her the operation in April.

According to Global Post, her medical team designed a tiny tube made of plastic fibers and then soaked it in her own stem cells, making it nearly impossible for her body to reject the transplant. The new trachea is not what caused her death.

Chicago Tribune reports that her parents shared information about her condition on their website, noting that Hannah was able to breathe on her own for the first time after the surgery and that is not why she died.

“Her new trachea was performing well, but her lungs went from fairly good, to weak, to poor,'' her parents wrote on their website. "Our hearts are broken. She gave us over 34 months of ever-lasting memories."

Photo Courtesy of Chicago Tribune.

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