4 minute read
3D-CREATION - APPLICATION AND IMAGINATION - WHERE WORLDS MEET
For most people the desire to own a 3D-printer was to make “stuff ”
Nowhere was this more evident than for ‘geeks’ but the 3Dprinter was embraced and soon put to work, creating figurines and other objects for role playing games like D&D. Moving from gamers and geeks to the sciences, the medical and veterinary fields have benefitted from the invention of 3D-printing and due to technological advancement in this area. SHOP-SA expects that we will surely be seeing new and ground-breaking developments in the not-too-distant future.
Advertisement
Medical
Medical imaging techniques, such as Xrays, computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and ultrasounds are often used to produce an original digital model which is subsequently fed into the 3D-printer.
One of the many types of 3D-printing that is used in the medical device field is bioprinting. Rather than printing using plastic or metal, bio-printers use a computer-guided pipette to layer living cells, referred to as bio-ink, on top of one another to create artificial living tissue in a laboratory.
Practice on print
These tissue constructs or organoids can be used for medical research as they mimic organs on a miniature scale. They are also being trialled as more affordable alternatives to human organ transplants. It allows a patient-specific organ replica so surgeons can practice before performing complicated surgery.
In prosthetics, the options are wide open and being developed. A team of Dutch surgeons, at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht, replaced the entire top portion of a 22 year–old woman’s skull with a customized printed implant made from plastic. This story has been replayed in China, where a man with a crushed skull was given a tailor-made, 3D-printed, titanium replacement, and in Slovakia, another patient with brain damage received a similar 3D-printed treatment. A further example occurred in Dubai. With a cerebral aneurysm in four veins, a patient was awaiting very complex surgery. However, the doctors printed a model of her arteries and, by practicing with it, discovered the optimal method for handling the operation.
Aside from this, medical equipment can be printed. This is already in practice in several poorer regions of the world where ordering and the associated cost of the item and shipping is prohibitive. In Haiti, for example, they are printing umbilical cord clamps at a fraction of the cost of a manufactured clamp.
Veterinary
The veterinary field is also making use of 3D-sculpted parts. A rare, red-crowned crane from a zoo in Guangzhou, China, Lili, has received its very own 3D-printed beak after breaking the upper part of her beak in a fight with another bird. She was unable to eat, but thankfully Chinese vets came to the rescue with a 3D-printed prosthesis. Doctors realised more had to be done to help the six-year-old bird to survive - especially as red-crowned cranes have a life expectancy of 50 or 60 years.
Before the perfect beak was created, the team went through a process of creating many different plastic models to see exactly how it would fit. They then printed the final beak in surgical grade titanium metal.
Her new 3D-printed beak was implanted in just 30 minutes, and when Lili woke up, she was quickly able to catch fish in a bucket once more. With her titanium beak, Lili is now the toughest bird in the zoo. Hopefully she won’t be getting into any more fights.
This is not the first nor only prosthetic beak that has been made - a bald eagle, a toucan and a macaw are a few birds to benefit from this technology. 3D-printing has even been used to give a penguin a new leg after losing his leg by getting tangled in fishing line.
Croc-tail
An alligator lost his tail as he was being smuggled but got a new 3D-printed tail. After five years of prosthetics of varying clunkiness, anatomy expert Justin Georgi of Midwestern University, who'd been involved with the construction of several tails, finally decided to go all in. He joined forces with a master's student and a local 3D-printing company to craft Mr. Stubbs a state-of-the-art, 3D-printed tail that was customized down to "below the millimetre scale."
Whilst most of the animals that have been assisted were in a captive environment to start with and will stay in captivity, it is certainly possible to release them back to the wild in some instances.
Moral boundaries
Medical practice has always struggled with moral and philosophical quandaries, and the veterinary industry has not been an exception.
3D-printing potentially made it harder by helping shift the balance on what previously was simply not medically feasible. Now, more than ever, the question is identifying where the line should be regarding what is possible vs. what is ultimately right for the animal or human.
Printing has moved from an office bound necessity and an administrative function to applied science. 3D-printers have really opened a new field of where medical science and technology meet. 3D- printing has so many applications that the only limit is your imagination and creativity.
For all the gamers out there using their printer to create characters from their imagination, you are the future, and we suspect that 3D-tech will become a profession in the not-too-distant future. �
