3 ms·
An acquaintance of mine had a part of her skull replaced by a 3D printed part, made by Materialise. While it sounds spectacular, she was out of the hospital in
by Tharkun 10y ago
An acquaintance of mine had a part of her skull replaced by a 3D printed part, made by Materialise. While it sounds spectacular, she was out of the hospital in days, none the worse for wear.
- jessriedel 10y agoCould you say more about it? For typical holes left by neurosurgical procedures the 3D printing part may be useful for comfort or cosmetics, but I think it is unlikely to be critically important. Surgeons have been using simple metal plates to patch holes in the skull for many decades, and they work pretty well.
- pinot 10y agoJust based on what they have on their site, no simple metal plate could make the shapes that they do/are working on. http://www.materialise.com/en/medical/patient-specific-implants/patient-specific-cranio-maxillofacial-implants http://www.materialise.com/en/medical/patient-specific-impla...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Tharkun 10y agoPart of her skull was damaged when she was a child. At the time it was replaced by some kind of plastic. But from what I gather it slowly started to deteriorate, until it got infected and pressure built up and it had to be removed/replaced. From what I can gather it's a piece a little over 10cm in diameter and resides above her ear.
- blazespin 10y agoMetal Plates make MRIs a pain.
- jessriedel 10y agoNo, essentially all modern metal implants are non magnetic, e.g., titanium. They go through MRIs all the time.
- mattkrause 10y agoNo, it's still a pain. Titanium is MR-compatible: the magnet won't rip the plate out of your head, which is good. However, it can cause huge artifacts that obscure things around the titanium implant (and, sometimes, depending on the scan parameters and implant location, elsewhere too). This is particularly annoying because the implants are often right near the areas you really want to image....