Surgeon Creates Pelvis Using 3D Printer

Stephen: A UK surgeon has used the latest 3D printing techniques to create a new pelvis for a man who had lost half his original one to cancer.

By Ben Farmer, The Telegraph UK – February 10, 2014

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A surgeon has used the latest 3D printing techniques to create a new pelvis for a man who had lost half his original one to cancer.

The unnamed patient is now able to walk with the aid of a stick after the transplant of the first pelvis of its kind.

3D printing allows the recreation of almost any three dimensional shape from computer data and is believed to have enormous potential in the field of medicine.

Craig Gerrand, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, used the procedure on a patient in his 60s who had to have half his pelvis removed to stop the spread of bone cancer.

Scans allowed his team to measure exactly how much bone would be removed. A bespoke replacement to fill the gap was then created on a 3D printer by laying down successive layers of titanium powder fused together with laser. The titanium pelvis was coated with a mineral into which the remaining bone could grow and a standard hip replacement was fitted into the new socket.

The patient suffered from a rare bone cancer called chondrosarcoma.

“Since this cancer does not respond to drugs or radiotherapy, the only option was to remove half of the pelvis,” said Mr Gerrand.

Standard implants do not always fit well – and in this case so much bone needed removing that nothing would have been left to which an implant could have been attached, the surgeon said.

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