An infant, Kaiba (KEYE’-buh)
Gionfriddo’s airway
kept collapsing, causing his breathing and often his heart to stop, due to a
condition which manifests with dynamic
airway collapse and respiratory insufficiency, tracheobronchomalacia, Figure A below.
Without a moment to spare, the doctor’s decided to implant a customized, bioresorbable tracheal splint. Now, nevertheless heroic, this doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, nor worthy of an IT newsletter. However, read further, not all the heroes have been revealed. The fact is that this splint was created with laser-based 3-D printing, to treat this life-threatening condition.
Akron, OH, permission
was granted by the Food and Drug Administration to use this device under the
emergency-use exemption, and written and informed consent by the parents. In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser
printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to
stop breathing nearly every day.Without a moment to spare, the doctor’s decided to implant a customized, bioresorbable tracheal splint. Now, nevertheless heroic, this doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, nor worthy of an IT newsletter. However, read further, not all the heroes have been revealed. The fact is that this splint was created with laser-based 3-D printing, to treat this life-threatening condition.
“He turned blue and stopped breathing on us,” and his father did
CPR to revive him, April Gionfriddo said.
More episodes followed, and Kaiba had to go on a
breathing machine when he was 2 months old. Doctors told the couple his
condition was grave.
“Quite a few of them said he had a good chance of not
leaving the hospital alive. It was pretty scary,” his mother said. “We pretty
much prayed every night, hoping that he would pull through.”
Then a doctor at Akron Children’s Hospital, Marc
Nelson, suggested the experimental work in Michigan. Researchers there were
testing airway splints made from biodegradable polyester that is sometimes used
to repair bone and cartilage, Figure B.
Kaiba had the operation on Feb. 9, 2012. The splint
was placed around his defective bronchus, which was stitched to the splint to
keep it from collapsing. The splint has a slit along its length so it can
expand and grow as the child does — something a permanent, artificial implant
could not do. Figure C
It’s the latest advance from the booming field of
regenerative medicine, making body parts in the lab.
In a single day, they “printed out” 100 tiny tubes,
using computer-guided lasers to stack and fuse thin layers of plastic instead
of paper and ink to form various shapes and sizes. The next day, with special
permission from the Food and Drug Administration, they implanted one of these
tubes in Kaiba, the first time this has been done. Figure E.
Suddenly, a baby that doctors had said would probably
not leave the hospital alive could breathe normally for the first time. He was
3 months old when the operation was done last year and is nearly 19 months old
now. He is about to have his tracheotomy tube removed; it was placed when he
was a couple months old and needed a breathing machine. And he has not had a
single breathing crisis since coming home a year ago.
“He’s a pretty healthy kid right now,” said Dr. Glenn
Green, a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist at C.S. Mott Children’s
Hospital of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where the operation was
done. It’s described in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Independent experts praised the work and the potential
for 3-D printing to create more body parts to solve unmet medical needs.
Kaiba's condition — an incompletely formed
bronchus, one of the two airways that branch off the windpipe like pant legs to
the lungs. About 2,000 babies are born with such defects each year in the
United States and most outgrow them by age 2 or 3, as more tissue develops.
In severe cases, parents learn of the defect when the
child suddenly stops breathing and dies. That almost happened when Kaiba was 6
weeks old at a restaurant with his parents, April and Bryan Gionfriddo, who
live in Youngstown, in northeast Ohio.
The plastic is designed to degrade and gradually be
absorbed by the body over three years, as healthy tissue forms to replace it,
said the biomedical engineer who led the work, Scott Hollister.
Green and Scott Hollister have a patent pending on the
device and Hollister has a financial interest in a company that makes scaffolds
for implants.
Sooooo... Having trouble sizing the tumor, how about a 3-D model of the actual internal organ? 3-D imaging has almost an endless list of uses for the Medical industry - who wouldn't want a three dimentional model to review, measure and touch. Not to mention forensics. How many times has it been specified to the pathologists that they cant disturb the remains. Well now this is almost moot, for 3-D prints not only bones, but vessels as well... get it? At the very least this case shows that 3-D printing can facilitate the creation of implantable devices for conditions that are anatomically specific for a given patient, or in short, save your life.
Source(s):
- http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1206319
- http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/doctors-save-ohio-boy-by-printing-an-airway-tube.php?ref=fpb
So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
____________________________________________________________
About Rick Ricker
An IT professional with over 21 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085
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