A team of Mount Sinai surgeons has performed the world’s first human tracheal transplant—an achievement that has the potential to save the lives of thousands of patients around the world who have tracheal birth defects, untreatable airway diseases, burns, tumors, or severe tracheal damage from intubation, including those who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and placed on a ventilator. Until now, no long-term treatments existed for these patients with long-segment tracheal damage, and thousands of adults and children have died each year as a result.