Definition
Plain language
An operation replacing part of a person's windpipe.
As stated in the literature
Airway replacement using donor or tissue-engineered trachea; Macchiarini's synthetic-scaffold variant produced high mortality and retracted publications.
Also called: tracheal replacement
Why it matters: It is a high-stakes operation where an unproven approach was carried out on real patients with fatal results.
For example, a surgeon removes a diseased stretch of windpipe and sews a replacement tube in its place.
Heard on the show
“Macchiarini's tracheal transplant paper gets six refusals in three hundred.”Episode 240 — Frontier Models Designed Follow-Ups To Fraudulent Papers 93% Of The Time