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made of titanium are available to patients fortunate (or courageous enough)
to receive advanced and/or experimental medical care.
Most standard bone replacements are injection molded if they're polymer or
cast in metal if they're made of titanium. The same limitations that apply to mak-
ing any plastic or metal machine part also apply to making bones. For example,
separate bone parts must be molded separately and then assembled later. Freshly
molded bones demand precision cooling conditions so they won't shrink or dis-
tort and will remain clean. Overcooling can make a new polymer bone brittle;
undercooling will result in a bone that's too soft and will smear while handled.
3D printed titanium bone implants have received regulatory approval, but
printed polymer bone implants have not. When polymer printed bones receive
regulatory approval, they offer new possibilities since polymer has special prop-
erties that titanium and ceramic lack. For example, a 3D printed polymer bone
could be infused with bioactive bone growth additives and active pharmaceutical
ingredients such as antibiotics or anti-inlammatory drugs. A 3D print head could
spray droplets of these bioactive chemicals with unmatched precision.
One dramatic surgery made the worldwide news in 2012 when a team of
surgeons inserted a titanium, 3D printed bone into the jaw of an 83-year old
Belgian woman with oral cancer. The process began when the medical team
took a CT scan of the woman's jaw. A medical design company, Xilloc Medical,
adjusted the CT scan data into a printable design ile and used computer algo-
rithms to add thousands of irregular grooves and hollows into the jawbone.
This way, the woman's veins, muscles and nerves could knit themselves more
quickly into the new jawbone to fully integrate it into her body.
An individual jawbone implant “baked” from powdered metal
