A nearly 3-year-old toddler who was the youngest person ever to receive a bio-engineered organ died Saturday in Illinois, surgeons involved in her treatment said. Hannah Warren was born in South Korea without a trachea, an extremely rare defect that is typically fatal. She had a bio-engineered windpipe made from her own stem cells implanted in April. It was only the sixth operation of its kind and the first to be performed in the United States. Doctors say the operation had also involved surgery on Hannah’s esophagus, which never healed properly. She had another operation last month to correct the problem and died from complications arising from the second operation.
