Some European doctors have performed the first trachea transplant using a woman’s own stem cells and brought back her ability to breathe freely, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.

The patient was Claudia Castillo, 30-year-old woman whose left airway was destroyed consequently to developing tuberculosis. She had already resorted to a stent, which has been inserted tin her body o reopen the affected airway, but the method failed and physicians had to remove the tube.

The young woman was hospitalized in March with her windpipe so badly destroyed that she couldn’t walk properly, the Bristol University said in a press release. “The only conventional option remaining was a major operation to remove her left lung which carries a risk of complications and a high mortality rate,” it said.  

Doctors performed the first tailor-made trachea transplant in June in Barcelona, Spain, after an organ donor was found. The donor trachea was washed no less than 25 times in order to eliminate all rests of live tissue, which could lead to rejection. Then the windpipe was coated with cartilage cells grown from the woman’s own stem cells, this way making her immune system accept the transplant.

10 days after the transplant, she got out of hospital. About four months after the surgery, Castillo was still doing well, recovering quicker than doctors expected.

Without a doubt, this is “a major achievement in the history of medicine,” said Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, head of Thoracic Surgery