HOW 3D TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING MEDICINE
Around the world, new medical applications for 3D printing are being pioneered every year. Among some of the recent developments:
In Japan, surgeons used an exact 3D printed model of an adult’s liver to figure out how best to trim the organ and transplant it into the donor’s child.
In Britain, doctors used 3D-printed models, surgical templates and titanium implants to repair devastating facial injuries suffered by a 29-yearold man in a motorcycle accident. In France, a 3D printed titanium plate solved a problem that plagued Maxime Turpin for 30 years: his eye drooped into the hole created by cancer surgery that removed a diseased part of the orbital bone in his face. The customized plate was modelled on the healthy side of Turpin’s skull. In Beijing, surgeons last year implanted the first 3D printed vertebrae in a 12-year-old boy who had a malignant tumour in his spinal cord. The titanium implant, custom made to fit with the other bones in his spine, was designed with tiny pores so that his healthy bones could grow into it, eliminating the need for cement and screws to hold it in place. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a critically ill child, Garrett Peterson, was saved when surgeons designed and implanted a 3D-printed splint to hold open his collapsing windpipe.