ONE NIGHT IN OCTOBER 2013, WHEN KINZIE LANDERS WAS 14 YEARS OLD, HER PARENTS RUSHED HER TO THE LOCAL EMERGENCY ROOM NEAR THEIR HOME IN TEXAS AS SHE WAS SLIDING INTO A COMA. UNAWARE THAT THEIR DAUGHTER HAD TYPE 1 DIABETES, HER PARENTS LISTENED HELPLESSLY AS DOCTORS EXPLAINED THAT THEY’D NEED TO INTUBATE HER. SHE WAS MINUTES AWAY FROM LOSING THE ABILITY TO BREATHE ON HER OWN.
Thoracic Surgeon Richard Battafarano, Otolaryngologist–Head And Neck Surgeon Alexander Hillel And Interventional Pulmonologist Andrew Lerner Are On The Multidisciplinary Team That Staffs The Johns Hopkins Complex Airway Clinic, Offering Comprehensive Diagnosis And Treatment For Patients With Laryngotracheal Stenosis.
“It was a lifesaving moment for which we’re forever grateful,” her mother, Shelly Landers, says.
But, Shelly adds, that single intervention led to future complications that Kinzie and her family never imagined. Months later, she’d developed so much scar tissue within her trachea that she struggled to breathe. Her airway was so swollen, remembers her mother, that doctors told her it was the diameter of a coffee straw.