An elderly woman replaced her own jaw with a prosthesis made on a 3D printer

A joint team of physicians from Belgium and the Netherlands successfully replaced the jaw affected by an infectious disease with a prosthesis printed on a 3D printer. The treatment in this situation was not possible, since the woman is already 83 years old, and the drug exposure could be dangerous to her health or even her life. Doctors chose an interesting way to create a prosthetic jaw - it was printed on a modern 3D printer.

In general, this is the first case of using models created on a 3D printer in medicine. Earlier there were some attempts, but such large-scale and complex replacements were not carried out. By the way, the implant was manufactured by Xilloc, known as the manufacturer of complex prostheses. The prosthesis itself is not plastic at all - it is titanium. The prosthesis was created by sintering titanium powder with a laser beam.
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A computer model of the jaw prosthesis was created in the usual 3-D CAD software. After manufacturing, the prosthesis was coated with a special compound that is not rejected by the human body. Well, by surgery, the prosthesis was attached to the skull, and made it functional. The woman, in her own words (yes, she can speak normally), does not feel any particular inconvenience.

In general, this case is indicative. It may well be that after some time, doctors will “bake” their dentures, like hot cakes, in the literal and figurative sense. And because such a prosthesis is created much faster than in the case of the usual method. Hopefully, such technologies will be able to spread to many honey. institutions of most countries, and of course, the CIS countries.

Via forbes