Doctors at the University of Michigan's C.S. Moss Children's Hospital have used a 3D laser printer to create a windpipe for a three-month old to breathe.
The infant boy suffered from a birth defect that caused his airway to collapse periodically.
During those almost daily occurrences, the baby, Kaiba Gionfriddo, would stop breathing, his face would turn blue and his heart would sometimes stop, said April Gionfriddo, the boy's mother
Doctors believed the condition would get progressively worse and, left uncorrected, could prove fatal.
"Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive," April Gionfriddo said in a news release. "At that point, we were desperate. Anything that would work, we would take it and run with it."
After the decision was made to acquire a splint that could be in inserted into Kaiba's trachea to keep the airway open, doctors within a day used computer-controlled lasers to print out 100 tiny biodegradable plastic tubes that they then stacked and fused together.
The following day, a surgical team implanted one of the tubes they made into Kaiba's airway - a procedure that had never been done before.
The Food and Drug Administration had approved the procedure beforehand, despite the lack of information about the effects of process.
As it turned out, after the tube was inserted, Kaiba was able to breathe normally.
"It was amazing. As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time and we knew he was going to be OK," Dr. Glenn Green, a pediatric specialist who led the procedure, said in a press release.
Now, about 16 months after the historic procedure, Kaiba reportedly has not had a single problem with his airway, Green told AP. "He's a pretty healthy kid right now."
About 2,200 babies are born in the U.S. each year with the condition known as tracheobronchomalaci, or collapsing windpipe, but few are as serious as Kaiba was.
Prior to the UM procedure, doctors only conducted trachea or windpipe transplants using body parts from deceased donors --- or infrequently parts grown in labs using stem cells.
Because Kaiba's windpipe was incompletely formed, those other approaches could not be used to treat his condition.
The plastic used for Kaiba's airway splint will degrade over time and be gradually absorbed by the body, allowing healthy tissue to grow over the device and replace it.
The new technology could potentially help thousands of children breathe normally.
"I can think of a handful of children I have seen in the last two decades who suffered greatly... that likely would have benefited from this technology," Dr. John Bent, a pediatric specialist at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told AP.
Scott Hollister, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical engineering at UM, said his involvement in the procedure will remain the highlight of his career.
"To actually build something that a surgeon can use to save a person's life? It's a tremendous feeling," he said.