Physicians in the Netherlands have successfully replaced most of a patient's skull with a plastic replica created on a 3-D printing machine.
The patient had been suffering from a life-threatening thickening of her skull. With the help of a medical device company that specializes in 3-D printing, surgeons at the University Medical Center Utrecht were able to develop and implant a custom-made plastic skull that allowed for a better fit and better results.
"We used to create an implant by hand in the operating theater using a kind of cement, but those implants did not have a very good fit," said Bon Verweij, the surgeon who performed the procedure, in a UMC Utrecht news release. "Now we can use 3-D printing to ensure that these components are an exact fit. This has major advantages, not only cosmetically but also because patients often have better brain function compared with the old method."
Three months after the procedure, the patient has recovered and is back at work. "There are almost no traces that she had any surgery at all," said Dr. Verweij.
Dr. Verweij believes the technique can be applied to patients with other kinds of bone deformities or whose bones have been damaged in an accident, according to the release.
More Articles on Medical Advances:
The Impact of Disruptive Technology and the Extinction of Hospital Care
Who Will Become The Digital Don Quixote for Healthcare Consumers?
Health IT Legislation to Watch in 2014