Surgery on a person's brain is quite complex and challenging, and the procedure becomes even more difficult even for the most skilled and experienced neurosurgeons to operate on a child or an infant
In Rzeszow, Poland, surgeons were faced with such a daunting challenge having a newborn patient who was born with just a fifth of her skull.
Baby Girl's Exposed Skull Has No Occipital Bone
The newborn baby i, a girl, did not have a formed occipital bone, leaving the brain tissue partially exposed. She was then taken to the University Children's Hospital of Krakow. At the same time, a centre was being sought that would provide the specialized treatment needed for the defect. The person to take on the difficult task was Professor Lukasz Krakowczyk of the Oncology Center in Gliwice.
Helping to prepare the virtual model of the skull was the e-Nable Polska Foundation, which has long co-operated with the Children's University Hospital in Krakow to solve such problems. Pawel Ozga was in charge of medical imaging segmentation and the process of preparing the 3D model necessary for printing. Once the diagnosis was complete, the child was then transported to the Upper Silesian Children's Health Center in Katowice for the surgery.
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Surgeons at the Upper Silesian Center of Child Health and doctors from the e-Nable Polska Foundation made an urgent request for help to save the baby's life from this nearly untreatable cranial defect.
The Warsaw tech firm, which specializes in 3D printing, then heeded the call by achieving the nearly impossible providing the innovation needed to help and save the life of a newborn infant with the critically underdeveloped cranium producing printing the exact 3-D copy of the baby's skull in one day.
If the surgery had not proceeded in four days, the baby would have been exposed to all types of infections.
The lifesaving exact model of the newborn's skull was produced after surgeons at the Upper Silesian Center of Child Health made an urgent request for help to save the baby's life from this nearly untreatable cranial defect.
After the project file was given to them, two Syngis engineers began printing the 3D skull model required for the baby. To prevent putting the baby at risk, Syngis used two different technologies:
First, the company printed an initial model using selective laser sintering (SLS)
The first model was prepared in SLS technology (selective laser sintering) through its Sinterit Lisa Pro 3D printer utilizing polyamide (PA12) powder.
A second model was then produced using SLA technology, which is printing technology that consists of hardening photosensitive resins layer by layer, was printed on the FlashForge Photo 8.9sz 3D printer, the standard resin in white, which was executed in eight hours
To save the baby's life Sygnis ceased all 3D printing projects to give way for the critiacal pediatric skull project and finished it in 26 hours.
About SLA and SLS Printing technology That Saved Baby's Life
The choice of resin technology (SLA) on the FlashForge Photo 8.9s 3D printer was used to swiftly produce an illustrative printout for evaluation by specialists before printing in SLS technology.
On the other hand, SLS technology, and polyamide (PA12) printing was done to accurately 3D print the model to the smallest detail for preoperative surgical procedures. Powder technology enables 3D printing without the need for support structures, which then allows the perfect reproduction of geometrically complex bone structures.
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