REAL LIFE NEWS: TITANIUM RIBS AND STERNUM FROM 3D PRINTER
by Hazed
A Spanish cancer patient has just had his sternum and ribs taken out and replaced by a titanium rib cage, which was 3D printed to be an exact fit.
The 54-year-old man suffered from chest wall sarcoma, which is cancer of the rib cage. Doctors decided that they should remove the sternum and part of several ribs which were diseased and replace them with a titanium chest implant.
This kind of implant is not new, but it is very complicated: the geometry of the bone structure makes it hard to build them, and there is a risk that the implants will come loose causing further problems.
Now, with 3D printing technology and a 3D model based on medical scans, it’s possible to print a complicated shape which matches the contours of the patient’s body.
The number of body parts which can now be replaced by 3D printed versions is getting longer – it includes dental, ankle, spinal, trachea and skull implants. Surely it won’t be long before we can 3D print an entire body.
