A 54-year-old patient suffering from a chest wall sarcoma became the first ever patient to receive a custom 3D printed titanium rib cage implant.
The Spanish man had needed a rib cage implant after surgeons had removed a part of his sternum and rib cage as part of his cancer treatment in order to rid off a cancerous tumor that had grown in his chest wall and in the surrounding areas.
Ordinarily, a flat titanium plate is used to reinforce the rib cage structure. However, this is not a perfect solution, as the plate can come loose and increase the risk of complications, according to CNET.
In this case, the patient’s surgical team at Salamanca University Hospital opted for a customized 3D implant that would safely replace and model his natural original bone.
"This part of the chest is notoriously tricky to recreate with prosthetics, due to the complex geometry and design required for each patient," says CSIRO, an Australian government science research agency that offered its lab for the printing.
While the use of 3D printing is very much in its infancy, the technology has the potential to revolutionize the field of medicine. Currently, the technology offers doctors inexpensive methods of printing hands ($100) for amputees as well as affordable replaceable prosthetic feet ($15) for children, according to Digital Trends.
The current 3D biomedical printing can even create implants that fuse to a bone and dissolve after the bone has regenerated, allowing for a wide array of potential applications.