Teflon fixes pensioner's 30-year cough

Helen Butterwick, a 70-year-old from Coventry, has become the first to have her throat repaired using Teflon, the material used to give frying pans their non-stick coating. Mrs Butterwick had suffered with a cough for more than 30 years before she was diagnosed with a condition that caused her windpipe to collapse.

Joseph Marzouk, a top surgeon at Walsgrave Hospital, in Coventry, performed a three-hour operation to fix the windpipe using Teflon to carry out the repair. Mrs Butterwick, a former hotline operator for the RAF rescue service, said she was amazed when she heard medics would use the substance in the procedure.

She said: "I said to doctors, but I just want to be able to breathe again, I don't need to cook a full English on my windpipe. The operation was painful, but I can breathe much better now."



Mrs Butterwick's condition, Flat Trachea Syndrome is a rare problem where the windpipe collapses. It affects people of all ages and causes violent coughing which can lead to blackouts.

Mr Marzouk is the first surgeon in the UK to rebuild a collapsed windpipe using Teflon. He came up with the idea by accident when he can ran out of Gore-tex when performing another operation.

The consultant thoracic surgeon used Teflon with great results and so decided to start using in the windpipe surgery. He said: "This type of surgery is incredibly rare, I have done it about 17 times in the last ten years, but this is the first time I have used Teflon."

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