Doctors Replace Patient's Thoracic Vertebrae With 3D-Printed Replica 55
ErnieKey (3766427) writes Earlier this month, surgeons at Zhejiang University in China performed a surgery to remove two damaged vertebrae from a 21-year-old patient. In their place they inserted a 3D printed titanium implant which was shaped to the exact size needed for the patient's body. The surgery, which took doctors much less time and provided significantly less risk [than conventional surgery] was completely successful and the patient is expected to make a full recovery. This is said to be the first ever surgery involving 3D printing vertebrae in order to replace a patient's thoracic vertebrae.
Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Source? References? Further information?
What caused the damage? What is the "conventional surgery"?
When did this happen?
No logical benefit from this (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an orthopaedic surgeon, and I doubt it's anything more than just a typical spacer that is commonly used.
OK found the article, and I'm corect.
http://3dprint.com/30512/3d-pr... [3dprint.com]
The title is misleading - it's just a 3D printed version of spacers that are commonly used - it really doesn't look, nor function any differently than the ones currently being used. The patient had a non-ossifying fibroma - rare in the spine, but benign, and will turn into regular bone eventually. This could have been treated with some bone graft and a plate and screws, which is basically what they did.
Nothing really new here.
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Thank you very much for the reference and insight.
I was quite curious how they could gotten the spinal cord into an artificial vertebra. I guess they could make it in two pieces and then combine the two pieces in place (screws?). I'm guessing that severing and reattaching the spinal cord itself isn't very feasible.
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Not until the loving, caring, and omniscient folks at the FDA [manhattan-institute.org] approve. And each would-be "app" will need a separate approval, of course.
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IT'S TOTALLY NEW. IT USED A 3D PRINTER, FROM THE FUTURE!!
and now we bring you the rest of the internet.
Re:No logical benefit from this (Score:5, Funny)
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No. At present, our current knowledge of materials does not cover Adamantium. Basically, it's not actually a real material (to the best of our knowledge).
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True but you wouldn't want to either. You need your bones the way they are, it is tough to get ligaments to grow and attach to metal. Without ligaments your muscles don't have anything to anchor too.
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No, you have to pour it in as it's molten hot because once it cools, you're not doing anything to it. That's why you need a mutant with healing powers...
Wait! What were we talking about?
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Other than mercury, what metal could conceivably have any kind of thing preventing it from being melted by a laser attaching to itself when it freezes again?
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Re:DMLS (Score:4, Insightful)
You could probably avoid that by sintering in an inert atmosphere, or in vacuum. In fact I would suspect high-end metal printers would do that anyway, in order to avoid the incorporation of oxides into the final product. After all virtually all metals "burn", lithium, etc. are just more volatile than most.
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Bromine.
For other reasons, none of the metals with a halflife of below a second would be advisable. Especially not for objects as large as this.
If you want to get technical both mercury and bromine would work fine, assuming your 3d printer is in a freezer.
Not that I would want an implant made of any of those metals.
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Bromine is a halogen, certainly not a metal.
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Oops.
Re:timothy (Score:5, Informative)
"3d printing with titanium?"
NASA did it like last year, or year before that.
Try keeping up with the pace of technology, luddite.
~Signed,
Person with a 3-d printed titanium femur and 3-d printed plastic composite patella.
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In any difference of opinion, pants always beats no pants. - Jerry Seinfeld
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Are you sure?
My opinion is that the women's olympics should return to it's roots and be performed in the nude. Heck, the men's too, wouldn't want the female spectators to feel left out.
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The same as every time - I rarely proofread forum posts more than a skim, and homophones slip through when I'm typing several sentences behind my thoughts.
And yes, I can count - my thoughts are simply more voluminous than my "prose". And I suppose it means that I don't care enough about the good opinion of "grammar nazis" to waste attention on the details of a throwaway joke. Anyone who comes to an internet board looking for flawless spelling and grammar is clearly just looking to spar. Which I can respect
This dude loves 3D printing news from 3dprint.com! (Score:1)
Re:This dude loves 3D printing news from 3dprint.c (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, he barely discusses anything and submits tons of stories from there.
50:1 this guy's shilling for ad dollars.
Howto ? (Score:2)
Please could someone explain to me how you put the vertebra around the spinal cord once the vertebra has been "printed" ? I think you can't cut the spinal cord, so how do you do this ?
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Have a look at the photos at http://3dprint.com/30512/3d-printed-thoracic-vertebrae/ and see what their 3d printed vertebra actually is.
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And here I was thinking it was like something out of aeon flux...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Idle speculation here, but in cases of severe intractable pain is it possible to ablate the spinothalamic tract? This is the pathway in the spinal cord that carries pain signals.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... [wikipedia.org]
It seems conceptually feasible and would theoretically result in permanent loss of pain and temperature sensation in the affected regions, while leaving discriminatory touch sensation intact.
Looks like someone else already had this idea...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/... [nih.gov]
It seems like focal destructi
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These types of surgeries usually end with more pain than you had going in.
Ouch!
Anyhow, if you look at what they made, it is a lot less nasty than some of the older methods. Essentially they put a stabilizing "wrap" around the vertabrae. The headlines are misleading. It looks like a good solution to her particular problem, as it sounded like she was ready to hang it up.
All that being said, surgery has come a long way, and I can see some of the 3-d work being of great use. As a for instance, my Wife had "mommy thumb" which is where the cartilage wears away at the base of the t
bad summary, no links? (Score:2)
Citations needed, as they say.
Also, 3-D printed titanium? Have we skipped ahead a century or so?
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Also, 3-D printed titanium? Have we skipped ahead a century or so?
No. If you have a cool million or so to drop on a 3 printer, you can print with a variety of metals in very high precision, including titanium and hardened steel.
For example, here is a 3D printed gun:
https://www.solidconcepts.com/... [solidconcepts.com]
You can print all sorts of stuff.
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Titanium printing has been around for years (someone above even claims a couple of decades) - we're talking the high-end laser sintering machines and related technology, not the johnny-come-lately cheap plastic extrusion crap. Those are essentially just toy versions of a concept pioneered much earlier.
Among the things that can now be 3D printed:
Various resins - I think these were actually the first to the party, and they've gotten rather advanced in a variety of different configurations.
Titanium
High tempera
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Think it will ever be possible to 3D print bone that has a genetic match for the person it was printed for? Kinda like in 5th Element, where the fluorescent green ooze made the bones of the supreme being.
It might be feasible to use bone granules as already used in bone grafts, along with some kind of glue matrix to hold it in place. What's not obvious is the choice of material for the glue matrix that is biocompatible with bone healing and providing sufficient material strength until replaced wih new bone growth. My understanding of the current state of the art involves splinting until the bone granules heal together, or, for example, using these bone granules in jawbone to build up bone prior to installing