A replica of the skeleton of a 23-year-old man helped rebuild his face after a recent severe facial accident.
Once admitted to the “CTO” Hospital in Turin, the young man’s surgery was prepared and planned in record time using 3D printing technology.
Shortly after the first CT scan, the case was studied in the hospital laboratory, which is testing new surgical methods with the help of 3D technologies. Machines and brains were turned on overnight so that everything was ready to go the next morning.
The maxillofacial surgeon, Emmanuel Zavatero, who performed the operation on the young man, said: “In the computer we can realign all the parts of the bone that have been broken, and we can obtain a correct model, with the correct shape of the young man’s face, and then, we can print this model so that we have a real three-dimensional model, and through this model, we can form certain devices that we will need in the operating room to turn our plan into reality “, according to” Euronews “.
Andrea Novarcio is the engineer who worked with the doctors to plan the operation, and she emphasized, explaining: “What the surgeon can do is look at the wounds in three dimensions to know which bones were broken during the trauma, and our mission is to convert them into a three-dimensional model using two-dimensional images. “
Engineers and doctors were able to simulate the surgery on a computer and reshape the anatomy of a face that had suffered fractures from severe trauma. The model was then 3D printed and surgeons were able to shape the patient’s titanium plates before entering the operating room.
Technology at the service of surgery
“In the past, this step was to create panel patterns that are directly on the patient during surgery,” says Novaricio. “Having an option to do this before the operation reduces the time spent in the operating room and the doctor can access all the elements.”
Operations like this have been done before, but they always took four or five days to prepare.
“Now we have reduced costs and we have a faster procedure, to the point that we were able to use the technology for this patient in just a few hours. So we can apply the operation to an increasing number of surgeries,” explains Guglielmo Ramire. Director of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Città della Salute University Hospital.
Previous procedures involved outsourcing the printing of the form, making it impossible for hospitals to use the technology in emergency trauma surgery.
“They have improved and changed the way they work,” says Sandro Moss, who oversees the engineers working in the hospital laboratory, adding: “We were able to test the results by comparing the CT scans that were done after the operation and the planned operation on the computer. There is a similarity to that. “” All systems are done correctly, thus improving the accuracy of the process as a result. In this way we also reduce the time we spend in the operating room, making things easier for patients. patients and allows them to recover quickly. “
The 23-year-old patient, who wishes to remain anonymous, is recovering quickly and will be able to return to his normal life in time, according to Ramieri.
See … 3D printed reconstruction of a young facehttps://t.co/wFtLdH9GF5#Lector_always pic.twitter.com/T2ODOSHuzP
– Al Bayan Newspaper (@AlBayanNews) February 1, 2021
Introvert. Beer guru. Communicator. Travel fanatic. Web advocate. Certified alcohol geek. Tv buff. Subtly charming internet aficionado.