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In This Issue:
BWH patient Brianna Ranzino at home with her dog, Benji.
It’s not every day that a 15-year-old girl inspires one of the plot lines for popular television show “Grey’s Anatomy.” But then, not much has been ordinary in the life of New Jersey native Brianna Ranzino these last few years.
After being diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor that was crushing her airway, Brianna came to BWH, where Chair of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine Charles Vacanti, MD, and his research team had developed a way to engineer a new trachea. His team collaborated with Thoracic Surgery’s David Sugarbaker, MD, chief, Raphael Bueno, MD, associate chief, and surgeon John Wee, MD, to plan an approach to help Brianna.
First, the surgeons took cartilage from one of her ribs. Then, researchers took cartilage cells from the rib and grew them in an incubator for several weeks. The cells were then seeded onto a scaffold in the shape of a trachea, which was implanted into Brianna’s abdomen for nourishment.
Ultimately, Sugarbaker and his team were able to perform a surgical resection of the trachea and esophagus this spring instead of implanting the new trachea. Still, the progress Vacanti and his team made in tissue engineering during this first-of-its-kind case will someday help many other patients.
Brianna, who nicknamed herself “the sci-fi kid” during the
process, takes everything in stride. “I think it’s really cool,” she said of the “Grey’s Anatomy” episode, which aired Oct. 28 and featured a brief cameo of Vacanti.
Since the surgery, Brianna has been able to return to many of the things she’s missed out on since becoming sick: eating her favorite foods, hanging out with friends and, most importantly, returning to school as a 10th grader after missing more than a year.
“I absolutely love it,” she said.
Her mother, Lisa Ranzino, said that life is dramatically different since the surgery. “Our lives are much happier now,” she said. “The doctors and staff here gave us our lives back.”
View a video interview with the Ranzinos during a recent visit to BWH.