Surgeons of the University Medical Centre Utrecht have the skull of a 22-year-old woman is replaced by a schedelprothese that was made with a 3d printer. The doctors could with the 3d-printer skull exact imitation.
The UMC Utrecht worked for the print of a skull together with the Australian company Anatomics, which is specializes in 3d-printed prosthetics. According to the doctors 3d-print great advantages over the old method, whereby doctors during the operation, schedeldeel to create a kind of cement.
Because 3d printers are an exact copy of the skull print, the schedelprothese much better than the old method. Also, it is hard to see that the patient has a schedelprothese and shows the brain function of the patients with a 3d-printed schedelprothese often better.
The surgeons are pleased with the results and think more patients to be able to help with a full schedelprothese. It would be worldwide for the first time that someone’s walking around with a fully 3d-printed skull. The printed skull is made of plexiglas, the form of which is determined on the basis of a 3d model based on a CT scan.
The hospital has for some time been waiting with the disclosure of the news to make sure that the surgery was a success. The operation by which the skull of the patient was replaced by a prosthesis of plastic took in a total of 23 hours. By now, the woman fully recovered and is again at work, it is also clear that they do not have adverse effects about the surgery.
The 22-year-old woman who was operated on was suffering from a disease which makes her schedelbot getting fatter. This came to her brain in the tribulation, making her eyesight declined. The expectation was that other brain functions, eventually also becoming less and less would be and the woman would eventually die. By now, the sight of the woman fully returned.