3D printing in medicine – necessary for further development

3D printing in medicine

About 13% of all 3D printing revenue comes from the medical industry. From prosthetics to surgical guides, 3D medical additive manufacturing technology has a surprising number of medical applications. The flexibility offered by 3D printing allows physicians to create devices tailored to patient needs at an affordable price.

 

3D printers medicine and tools

3D printing has practically become synonymous with rapid prototyping. The ease of use and low cost of in-house 3D printing have also revolutionized product development, with many medical instrument manufacturers adopting the technology to produce entirely new medical devices and surgical instruments.

Some devices are printed from a standard design to make multiple identical copies of the same device. Other devices, called patient-specific devices or patient-specific devices, are created from a specific patient's imaging data.

3D printers for prostheses

 

Simple prosthetics are only available in a few sizes, so patients must make do with what fits best, while customized bionic devices designed to mimic the movements and grips of real limbs depend on the residual limb muscles to control their functions. So expensive that they are only available to patients with the best health insurance in developed countries. This applies especially to children's dentures. As children grow up, they outgrow their dentures and require expensive repairs.

3D printing in medicine can be used to produce prosthetic limbs that are tailored to the user's needs. Amputees often wait weeks or months to receive a prosthesis through the traditional route; However, 3D medical printing significantly speeds up this process and also creates much cheaper products that offer patients the same functionality as traditionally manufactured prostheses.

The lower price of these products makes them particularly suitable for use in children who rapidly outgrow prosthetic limbs.

A 3D printer in medicine also allows the patient to design a prosthesis that directly meets his needs. Needless to say, the low cost of producing these prosthetics, along with the freedom that comes with custom designs, has proven to be a revelation. 3D dentures made using 3D printing are ready in a few hours and in as little as two weeks, and then tried and maintained at a much lower cost than their traditional counterparts.

Commercially available 3D printed medical devices include:

• Instrumentation (e.g. guides to aid in proper surgical placement of the device),
  Implants (e.g. cranial plates or hip joints),
• 3D printed external prostheses (e.g. hands).
• Medical devices produced by 3D printing include orthopedic and cranial implants, surgical instruments, dental restorations such as crowns and external dentures.
• 3D printing medicine and medical devices

Medical 3D printers can be used to produce sterile surgical instruments such as forceps, hemostats, scalpel handles and clamps. Not only does 3D printing produce sterile tools, but some are based on the ancient Japanese practice of origami, which means they are precise and can be made very small. These instruments can be used to operate on small areas without causing unnecessary additional damage to the patient.

One of the main benefits of using 3D printing instead of traditional methods of producing surgical instruments is that production costs are significantly lower.

3D modeling in medicine – organ replicas for patients

 

Another use of 3D printing in medicine is to create patient-specific replicas of organs that surgeons can practice on before performing complex surgeries. This technique has been proven to speed up procedures and minimize trauma to patients.

This type of procedure has been performed successfully in surgeries ranging from full face transplants to spine procedures and is becoming routine practice. Therefore, 3D Modeling in medicine can be considered as a good way of practice for young doctors.

Conventional treatments for patients with severe organ failure currently include the use of autografts, transplants of body tissue from the same person from one site to another, or transplants of organs from a donor. Scientists in the fields of bioprinting and tissue engineering hope to soon change this and be able to create tissues, blood vessels and organs on demand.

3D bioprinting refers to using additive manufacturing processes to deposit materials known as bioinks to create tissue-like structures that can be used in medicine. Tissue engineering refers to a variety of emerging technologies, including bioprinting, for growing replacement tissues and organs in the laboratory for use in the treatment of injuries and diseases.

3D printing has proven capable of overcoming the challenges of producing synthetic blood vessels, solving the difficulties of reproducing the precise shapes, sizes and geometries of the required vessel. The ability to precisely tailor printed solutions to the specific needs of patients proved to be insightful.