by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | May 06, 2014
From the May 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The reconstruction process begins with a CT scan, which is turned into a 3-D image based on the bony tissue anatomy. Next, the surgeon provides input on how they want to do the reconstruction.
“It’s up to us to interpret that surgical intent to the optimal design solution and produce iterations that can be validated onscreen or printed,” Eggbeer says.
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They print using a polymer for testing, and then use more expensive metal materials once the prescribing surgeon signs off on the final design.
It’s definitely a team effort, and the challenge comes in working with the surgeons to make sure they understand both the potential and the constraints of these technologies. “There’s a gap between what surgeons see as possible and what engineers see as possible with the same technology,” Eggbeer says. “It’s one thing to create the perfect engineered body part on the computer screen, but that’s not always perfect for the surgery.”
While the technology to print implants that provide structural support is mostly there, there are still advances to be made. At the same Inside 3D Printing Conference where Atala spoke, Dr. Amir Dorafshar, assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery and clinical co-director of the face transplant program at Johns Hopkins Medicine, mentioned some of the limitations.
In some cases, doctors have taken bones with blood supply from a patient’s leg to aid in facial reconstruction. Dorafshar has also been involved in face transplants, including a major one in 2012 involving a man whose face had been damaged in a gun accident. But if face transplants aren’t futuristic enough, Dorafshar says they’re moving toward creating scaffolding printed in 3-D with a vascular structure.
“In the future, we hope to have a mask 3-D printed from the donor face,” Dorafshar says. “For a face transplant case, where we take the face of a donor to place on a recipient of another, we end up with a large defect on the donor. This can be reconstructed more readily with a 3-D implanted face to preserve the donor’s dignity.”
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