ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING DRIVES TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDICAL AND ORTHOPEDIC SECTOR

3D printing is the perfect technology to support the evolution of personalized digital medicine. The development of new materials, with technical and mechanical properties and the achievement of objects with perfect finish is part of the several goals of Smart Materials 3D, in continuous search of the improvement through the conception of innovative products for the medical industry.

Orthopedic surgeons have embraced and incorporated 3D technology into their clinical practice to develop orthopedic applications and specific therapies to their patients, setting a precedent for future generations of physicians, not only in surgical and medical practice, but also in the training of medical students, since the use of this technology it covers a wide range of utilities from angle and cutting tools, to simulations and modeling of different prototypes in 2D and 3D environments in a very simple way.

There are many areas in which additive printing is being used in the medical sector, such as preoperative planning, with 3D printed models that can be used in complex orthopedic cases, the manufacture of implants suitable for human contact with fully customized designs with a level of accuracy and speed that would be impossible to implement in manual manufacturing, among several advantages is worth mentioning the substantial reduction in surgery times, being able to carry out early tests on exact three-dimensional replicas of bone structures or organs, which leads to a reduction in the time of anesthesia use, especially beneficial for elderly patients, and in this way it reduced the costs of operations and a shorter recovery time.

There are many 3D printing materials used in the medical sector such as SMARTFIL® PLA for the development of prototypes or SMARTFIL® EP used to replicate bone structures with major realism, due to its similarity and also because it is a radiopaque material, as well as SMARTFIL® FLEX 93A, a polyurethane-based thermoplastic elastomer that allows vascular structures and organs to be replicated, has also extended the use of support filaments such as SMARTFIL® PVA ULTRA in order to make post-processing more efficient and improve the accuracy of the printed object. The demand and production capacity of specific instruments for patients has led to the development of biocompatible materials such as SMARTFIL® MEDICAL with their corresponding certificates for medical use.

As if that were not enough, 3D technology is a great tool for medical training and simulation, which is also carried out in an efficient and personalized way, since training models can be manufactured that reproduce specific pathologies of real medical cases, as well as the use of bone reconstruction is another important topic that 3D printing is providing a solution with the possibility of creating printed replicas of bone fractures of patients, for these specific cases the SMARTFIL® NYLSTRONG is used, which has a hardness similar of human bone, increasing the successful results of orthopedic trauma surgeries, it is also worth noting the substantial reduction in manufacturing times with respect to the delivery time traditionally which used to be more than six months, with the latest 3D printing technology, the delivery time can be as little as six weeks.

We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg, as there is a great potential with the combination of this technology with the use of AI in orthopedics and surgery, with the development of robotic surgical instruments that align with the anatomy of patients, and they can handle inside of a patient with the precision of artificial intelligence, duplicating the eyes and tools of a surgeon.

3D printing in healthcare is becoming a huge trend for professionals to find revolutionary ways to use it in the medical field and manufacturers with their constant innovation in custom formulated technical materials to increase and/or modify their properties creating even more precise and specialized filaments.