Belgian Doctors Give Injured Woman A New Windpipe

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For more than 2 1/2 years, Linda De Croock lived with constant pain from a car accident that smashed her windpipe. Today, she has a new one after surgeons implanted the windpipe from a dead man into her arm, where it grew new tissue before being transplanted into her throat. The way doctors trained her body to accept donor tissue could yield new methods of growing or nurturing organs within patients, experts say.

The technique sounds like science fiction, but De Croock says it has transformed her life. She no longer takes anti-rejection drugs.

"Life before my transplant was becoming less livable all the time, with continual pain and jabbing and pricking in my throat and windpipe," the 54-year-old Belgian told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.