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A 3D-printed jaw for a cancer patient

The new 3D-printed prosthesis gives him a comfortable face with a lighter and more natural look.

Yes! 3D printers are here since long and researchers have printed almost everything—from a needle to a building. When 3D printing came into existing, it was almost unaffordable. However, 3D printers today are available for as cheap as Rs 15,000. 3D printers can print almost anything—from a needle to a building and from a car to a spacecraft, everything is possible. Researchers are also trying their hands on printing food—wonder how they would taste! But printing human body parts is something wonderful.

Though not something new, there have been instances where medical researchers are printing body parts and organs using 3D printers. In a new case, Form Labs has changed the life of Shirley Anderson, who was suffering from cancer and lost his jaw to the disease.

Their strong marriage was shaken in 1998, when Shirley discovered a cancerous lump on his tongue. From that point on, Della says, “It’s kind of been one bad thing after another.” For years, Shirley endured surgeries and radiation therapies. Doctors put a radium implant in his jaw, which destroyed his facial tissue. Surgeons removed his chest muscles to recreate his lower face, but it didn’t work — in the end, he was left without a jaw and Adam’s apple. Because he couldn’t eat solid food, he lost 80 pounds in three months. He now wears a surgical mask in public to hide his lower face. He usually speaks by writing on a handheld whiteboard or by communicating through Della, mentions Form Labs.

Their luck began to change in 2012 when they met Dr. Travis Bellicchi, a resident at the Indiana University School of Dentistry who specializes in maxillofacial prosthetics. Shirley’s case was a huge challenge — he required a facial prosthesis that was about four times larger than anything made at IU. Yet Dr. Bellicchi was determined to create an artificial jaw for Shirley.

At first, Dr. Bellicchi used traditional techniques to make Shirley’s prosthesis. With this method, Shirley had to sit with plaster on his face for several hours. Some patients who undergo this procedure panic because of the claustrophobic feeling of their face covered in plaster, requiring them to breathe through a straw. Next, Dr. Bellicchi cast a replica of Shirley’s face in gypsum that was used to sculpt the prosthesis in clay. He used that sculpture to cast the final silicone version. An artist painstakingly handpainted the surface to match Shirley’s skin tone, a process called aesthetic characterization. Despite its many shortcomings, this has long been the standard method for creating artificial facial parts.

3D-printed jaw

“The traditional process for impression, sculpting, moldmaking, and aesthetic characterization is a laborious task,” Dr. Bellicchi explains. The prosthesis was so uncomfortable that Shirley couldn’t wear it for more than four hours at a time, it was so heavy that it often slipped down, and the surface lacked realistic skin details. Dr. Bellicchi says, “I knew there was a need for a digital solution.”

Professor Zeb Wood, a lecturer at the School of Media Arts and Sciences, connected Dr. Bellicchi to digital scanning, digital sculpting, digital moldmaking, and high-resolution 3D printing. For Shirley’s new prosthesis, instead of the uncomfortable impression process, they created what they call a “virtual patient” — a digital model of Shirley’s face using CT scan data to capture bone detail, overlaid with a 3D facial scan. Dr. Bellicchi watched in amazement as Cade Jacobs, an IU student, designed a prosthesis in ZBrush 3D sculpting software in a fraction of the time it would have taken to sculpt it in clay.

The team used Formlabs 3D printers to turn the digital sculpt into a 3D printed mold, ready to cast for the final prosthesis. They had originally experimented with FDM printing, but they preferred the Form 2 SLA 3D printer because it captures intricate, pore-level surface details and provides a watertight mold.

3D-printed jaw

The new 3D printed mold has a number of improvements on the original. It looks more realistic and is much lighter and more breathable so that Shirley feels comfortable wearing it for a longer period of time. The new prosthesis also has a “feather-edge margin” around the outside, a tapered silicone edge that creates a more natural break.

The IU team has applied this groundbreaking method to six other patients and continue to seek candidates. Dr Bellicchi is thankful that Shirley was the first patient. He says, “It’s a privilege to have an opportunity to work with a patient like Shirley because Shirley makes the process collaborative. Shirley participates in my work to improve his prosthesis. Although it’s likely the most significant challenge I will ever face in my prosthetic career, I think it may be the most rewarding.”

3D-printed jaw

Today, Shirley and Della Anderson focus not on what they’ve lost but on what they still have. Shirley recently wrote on his whiteboard, “I have my life going just as I want.” Now, he has something that very few people have — a medical process named after him. Dr. Bellicchi calls the new digital method of creating artificial facial parts “The Shirley Technique.”

This article was first published on Form Labs.

( Source : deccan chronicle )
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