3d Printing for Surgeons: The Incredible Revolution in Medicine

3D Printing for Surgeons: The Incredible Revolution in Medicine

By Chidimma Okpara

3D printing, or three-dimensional printing, is a manufacturing method used universally in different workplaces in which objects are made by fusing materials in multiple layers to produce a 3D object. 3D printed objects can be made out of steel, iron, plastic, rubber and even living cells. There are other names for 3D printing, such as additive manufacturing (AM) and rapid protection (RP), but it is most known as 3D printing. There are dozens of unique printing forms, which use different technologies, speeds, and resolutions in order to create a 3D object. 3D printing has really revolutionized the world for consumer, commercial, medical, and private purposes. Overall 3D printing is very beneficial and crucial to society, as the ideas of what we can create are limitless.

Fortunately, desktop 3D printed medical objects are provided to surgeons for an extremely low cost! And it is becoming rapidly easy and inexpensive enough to be used by consumers. Also, it is easy to produce the medical models cheaply. The types of surgeons that use 3D printing are spinal, dental, brain, heart, and orthopedic surgeons. It is primarily used for tissue and organ fabrication; creating prosthetics, implants and anatomical models.

The benefits of 3D printing save generally time and money for surgeons. 3D printing helps surgeons to visualize and physically feel the part that they will be operating on, whether it's the bone structure or muscle or an organ. By seeing it, they're able to plan out ahead of time how they want to perform the surgery. 3D printing helps train surgeons and other medical professionals and is a great learning tool as well as a tool for planning how to operate on a patient. I think that it's made out of some polymer, but I'm not really sure. I think that what it's made out of differs by what it is. For example, for a spine model, the last article says that the models are made from a polymer and a binding agent and coated in polyester. And the discs between the vertebrae are made from silicone. In general, 3D orienting has had and continues to have a considerable impact on surgery. By 3D printing medical models, surgeons and surgical engineers can get a hands-on learning experience regarding the human anatomy to help see what they are dealing with, and to help understand their condition or operation for the surgery before they perform on the patient. In surgical planning, medical models have been used to guide extensive teams through complex surgeries. For example, in conditions such as conjoined twins or a small tumor deeply embedded in the brain, and are 3D printed models, can help surgeons prepare and train for the upcoming complex procedure. It can also help decrease the amount of surprises that could pop up during the procedure. Higher productivity makes it efficient for the objects to be made within several hours, instead of calling a company to ship an object, which would take several days. In the past, surgeons had to rely on using animal models and human mannequins for training, now with 3D printing, anything is possible to print from ears