BOY, 2, GETS ARTIFICIAL WINDPIPE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993                   TAG: 9302240111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA                                LENGTH: Short
BOY, 2, GETS ARTIFICIAL WINDPIPE
A 2-year-old boy who was slowly suffocating received what doctors said Tuesday was the first artificial windpipe implant in a child.
Oslin Williams, who was severely burned in a fire that killed his father last year, would have asphyxiated if he did not have the operation, surgeons said.
Scar tissue from internal burns was slowly closing the boy's airpipe, and doctors said he had about one month left to live.
Dr. Stephen Westaby, a cardio-thoracic surgeon from the Oxford Heart Center in England, led a team of 15 in the three-hour operation at the Red Cross Memorial Children's Hospital.
Westaby, inventor of the artificial windpipe, has performed the operation on more than 100 adults, but not on a child before.
Westaby performed the operation by stretching the boy's own windpipe around a larger silicone implant. In five years, surgeons say, Oslin's windpipe should have molded itself to the right size and shape and have healed sufficiently for the implant to be removed.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB