3D Update, part 5 |

You know, I spent all this week (so far) talking about 3D printing and its effect on industry and general business. Today, I will focus in on what this one development has and will bring to health care.

Imagine if you were a surgeon and had to do a very tricky operation… Wouldn’t it be great if you had a 3D model upon which you could try it- to insure that there would be no hidden surprises?

Oh, I know we have MRI and CT scans, but sometimes seeing what we are doing in life-sized, concrete (ok, plastic) views are invaluable. After all, MRI and CT scans are only 2 dimensional! These 3D models and templates would afford dry runs and practice- to insure the operation were perfect. And, might even free up the valuable OR (operating room) resource with all the nurses, anesthetists, machinery, etc. for more operations, since the surgeon can be totally assured of technique- and drawbacks. (One 30 minute cut in an OR session would probably pay for the entire 3D printing episode.) And, that’s not including the patient benefits of shorter recovery times, since no extra snips or cuts were made.

This is not sci-fi, folks! Right here in DC, the Children’s National Medical Center is doing this right now. They are printing hearts- not for implantation, but to examine the intricacies and deformities in a child’s heart to better understand the patient’s situation. Moreover, some of these models use different plastics- a mixture of hard and soft varieties, to make the replica feel more like the real McCoy. (Soft heart valves are surrounded by harder tissue structures, with even harder bony structures, for example.)

Since this is an expensive process, right now 3D printing and modeling is limited to the rare or complicated situations, to those patients who have complex congenital defects. It has already helped the hospital modify an endoscope to reduce human involvement in the procedure and to design forceps that better rotate the needles that a doctor employs to stitch up the patient.

At $40 a gram for the “ink” (plastic), a heart may use $30 of materials or even a $100- but those materials are just a small part of the overall costs. And, just like industrial (or home) 3D printers, the “print” can take a few hours- or even an entire day. When it’s done, it looks like a jello-ey blob, since the models are surrounded with a soft filler material, to preclude the very hot plastics from collapsing in upon themselves, as each layer is produced. The part must be put into a bath or a power washing unit to clean out these fillers.

And, I doubt we’ll be doing these prints at home. Not because we don’t have access to the CAT scans or MRI, but because this printer costs about ¼ million bucks! (Which is why the nearby Johns Hopkins hospital farms out its 3D printing to a nearby modeling firm for the skull plates it wants. Georgetown University and George Washington Hospitals have not even started any such program.)

But, with the congenital defects that Children’s sees, it couldn’t afford to NOT be a pioneer- because it’s the children that count.

(I didn’t discuss this development – 3D printing of skulls, for the same reason as the hearts- but this is a great video!)