A newborn baby is still alive because of a 3D printed heart!
The life of a two-week-old baby boy, born in July with a congenital heart defect, was saved when his doctors made use of a 3D-printed heart. Not an organ 3D printed from tissue, but a model of the heart that allowed a team of surgeons at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian to practice before doing the operation.
"The baby's heart had holes, which are not uncommon with CHD, but the heart chambers were also in an unusual formation, rather like a maze," cardiac surgeon Emile Bacha of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital tells the CT Post.
They say that the baby's heart disease was unusually complicated. Both the aorta and pulmonary arteries rose from the right ventricle, and there was a big hole in his heart. Unfortunately a CT scan was not sufficient to help the doctors to figure out a surgical plan, since the baby's heart has the same size of a walnut.
With the help of the CT scans and finance from Matthew's Hearts of Hope, the team ordered a model heart from Cardiovascular Business Development Manager Todd Pietila at Materialise. Using Materialise's Mimics Innovation software, Pietila created a 3D model of the heart, which taken the heart's structure and defects in a precise detail.
After two days, the team had a model of the heart 3D printed out of a flexible material that could be cut into and operated, which allows them to make a plan to repair all of the heart's defects in just a one-time surgery process, instead of three or four -- and, at just one week old, the baby's operation was a success, setting the baby on the path to a long and happy life.
"The baby's heart had holes, which are not uncommon with CHD, but the heart chambers were also in an unusual formation, rather like a maze," said Dr Emile Bacha, a congenital heart surgeon and Director of Congenital and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery.
"In the past, we had to stop the heart and look inside to decide what to do," Bacha tells the Connecticut News-Times. "With this technique, it was like we had a road map to guide us,"he adds. Having the model to look at made things much easier, and the team was able to repair the baby's heart with one just operation.
The model, Materialise said, was so successful that the company and the hospital are already working together on other cases.
"After the success of this surgery, it's hard to imagine entering an operating room for another complex case without the aid of a 3D printed model," Dr Bacha said. "It's definitely going to be standard of care in the future and we're happy to be leading the way."
