A work in synergy between Medere, 3DItaly, Formlabs and the orthopedics team of the Mediterranean Clinic in Naples led to the digital reconstruction and 3D printing of a patient’s hemibacin and femur to allow for the success of the surgery.
A 56-year-old patient with a history of hip implant failure: a challenge that we faced with the orthopedic specialists of the Mediterranean Clinic.
The Mediterranean Clinic of Naples is a accredited hospital and Diagnostic Center, which performs highly specialized activities, including orthopedic surgery, in which operates the team of prosthetic orthopaedics hip and knee composed by Giuseppe Santoro, director of the unit, and doctors Francesco Aquino, Massimiliano Amato, Roberto De Filippis and Raffaele Verrazzo.
The team always attentive to new technologies and interested in finding new solutions, has called us to collaborate with them for a reconstruction of the hemipelvis and femur through 3D printing of the model.
The basic element for the reconstruction was the images acquired through computed tomography and processed to generate an STL file, necessary to reconstruct with millimeter accuracy the bone anatomy of the patient. Thanks to the Formlabs Form 3L stereolithographic resin printers, 3D models for the three-dimensional planning of the intervention were then printed.
Thanks to the accurate reconstruction and subsequent 3D printing, it was possible to carry out a 1:1 scale preoperative simulation of the surgery to be performed, planning all the surgical phases, choosing the most suitable instrument and prosthetic implant to speed up the execution time and limit the unforeseen intra-operators. From the three-dimensional planning and simulation of the procedure, we then moved on to the surgery that was successfully completed.
The success of the experience has led Massimiliano Amato, a member of the team of specialists, to declare “We hope in the near future to be able to take advantage more often of such a procedure of 3D reconstruction, to develop together with the teams of engineers and designers dedicated new technologies and new materials, in order to improve the accuracy of surgery and always provide the most appropriate care to our patients”