3D Printing at the bleeding edge of Medical Technology
The latest sector to start utilising 3D printing is the Medical industry. Not for tooling & medical instrument prototypes, but for prototypes of bones!
Rapid prototyping has several uses
in the medical sector including making models of actual bones so that surgeons
can practice complicated procedures or in leading edge stem cell research.
An example
of this is the Walter Reed Army Medical centre that treats wounded soldiers in
Iraq. They had a patient that had a bony tumour that needed to be removed from
the back of the knee unfortunately this growth was dangerously close to a nerve
and an artery making the procedure tricky. The orthopaedic surgeon that was
carrying out the operation was able to “practice” on the model of the knee
helping him avoid the nerve and artery during the actual surgery.
A CT or MRI
scan can be transferred into a digital 3D model using specialist software. This
information can then be sent to a 3D printer or service provider for production
of the model. The surgeon can then use the
3D model to practice the procedure before he carries it out on the real
patient.
An article
recently published in New Scientist explains how an exact replica of a
man’s thumb has been made for the first time using a 3D printer. A 3D image of
the existing bones was first made, if the bone has been lost or destroyed a
mirror image can be made of the surviving opposite side, this information is
then sent to the 3D printer. In this case the medium used for the 3D printing
was Tricalcium Phoshate mixed with a type of Polylactic acid (all natural
structural materials found in the human body). The result is a bone “scaffold”
that has thousands of tiny pores to which bone cells can settle and grow.
Eventually the scaffold is replaced completely by the new growing cells.
The next stage for this breakthrough is to prove whether the implants are functional and that blood vessels grow when they have been implanted.
Both of
these examples represent leading edge uses of 3D printing and the technology
continues to move forward at a rapid rate. When will it be possible for us to
be able to print out spare parts for ourselves?
I wonder
how long it will be before they can do extensions.........
