Esophagus reconstructed

In the US, a few months ago, doctors successfully reconstructed a severely damaged esophagus using commercially available stents and skin tissue.

Professor Kulwinder Dua from the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA, and colleagues reported using metal stents as a non-biological scaffold and a regenerative tissue matrix from donated human skin to rebuild a full-thickness 5 cm defect in the esophagus of the patient.

The 24-year old man who was earlier involved in a car accident was admitted to the hospital with a disrupted esophagus resulting in life-threatening infection and inability to swallow following complications.