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While experts say it is too early to deem the transplant a success, only three months following her operation, Sein has had no complications, but she needs to take anti-rejection drugs for the foreseeable future to ensure her body doesn’t reject the donor organ.
Though the trachea is seen as a small tube that allows air to flow into the lungs, doctors have said the act of transplanting a donor trachea to the recipient’s blood supply is complex and difficult.
“It is just technically extremely difficult,” David Klassen, chief medical officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing, or Unos, which manages the transplant system in the United States, told The Guardian. “It’s been a very difficult thing to crack.”