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gone down, it's still going to be a significant investment for a facility to buy a
printer and staff it with the technical people who'll be able to run it. But there
may be a viable alternative. You can also outsource it to specialized companies
that have both the 3D printers and expert staff. That's a way of integrating the
technology without having to have a printer in each facility.
OSM
Dr. Krieger (
a k rieg er@childrensna tiona l.org
) is principal investigator and a bio-
medical robotics expert with the Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C.
N E W D I M E N S I O N S
tom 3D-printed titanium implants and a repositioning guide to hold bone segments in place
while the implants were placed.
"It was a very complex injury and correcting it involved bones having to be re-cut into sev-
eral fragments," Dr. Sugar told the Daily Mail (
tinyurl.com/loqtmnb
). "It made sense to plan it in
three dimensions."
He was able to plot his course on a 3D model before every stage of the operation. "The
results are in a different league from anything we've done before," he says.
A British surgeon also recently used 3D printing technology to recreate half a pelvis for a
patient in whom bone cancer took a segment of the original, according to a published report in
the Telegraph (
tinyurl.com/lfyl54p
).
CT and MRI scans determined the amount and shape of the bone lost. The 3D printer
then created successive layers of titanium, fused together by a laser, into the shape of the
missing pelvis segment, which was mineral-coated to allow bone ingrowth. The surgeon
implanted the segment, which reportedly fit perfectly, and performed a standard hip
replacement to insert the new joint implant into the printed titanium socket.
— Daniel Cook
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