3D printing helps crash victim

The Gloucestershire company used its AM250 technology to create bio-compatible cobalt chromium cutting and placement guides, to help surgeons rebuild patient Stephen Powers’ severely damaged left cheekbone and eye socket.

Renishaw is the only UK manufacturer of metal 3D printing machines. Following the success of its use in Powers’ surgery, it plans to introduce more AM250 models and increase its capacity for developing both dental and maxillofacial medical products.

Ed Littlewood, marketing and business development manager for dental products at Renishaw, said: “We will also be researching and exploring new materials for medical applications. Titanium is an excellent material for surgical implants and is what we are concentrating on. We hope to have medically validated titanium to offer our customers soon.”

The use of titanium as a medical implant to replace a biological tissue is not a new concept but the use of 3D printed titanium is. One of the material’s biggest advantages is its strength – it retains as much strength as steel but is also around 50% lighter, making it ideal for use in surgical implants. The other major and overriding advantage is that titanium has a low immunological profile and does not usually instigate an irreversible autoimmune response to the implant in most patients. The guide and implants for Powers’ facial reconstruction surgery were built with the Renishaw AM250 additive manufacturing machine, which uses a high-powered ytterbium fibre laser to fuse fine metallic powders together to form functional 3D parts. The AM250 is used in a variety of industries but is increasingly being applied in the medical sector owing to its precision, as it can use data that has been converted from CT scans.

Maxillofacial surgeon Adrian Sugar spoke about the benefits of using the AM250 in Powers’ surgery: “The results are in a different league from anything we’ve done before,” he said. “It allows us to be much more precise. Everybody is starting to think in this way – guesswork is not good enough.”

The use of custom-built implants and guides in Powers’ surgery, according to Littlewood, is a sign of things to come, with 3D printing technology bringing significant advancements to surgical procedures.

“In-surgery, custom-made tools and aids will become more commonplace for maxillofacial, dental and orthopaedic surgery. Engineers have been using jigs and guides to solve problems through the ages. This technology allows the approach to be used by surgeons,” he said.