This is certainly a lovely innovation although we have no discussion of how the skin over the skull behaves here. What it is though is a sound solution to the main problem of replacing a large piece of bone. I would like to see a porous structure able to hold living bone but that is far away here.
A similar solution could have been carved from wood to act as a mold. Even the lost wax method works just as well i suspect. The real challenge is mating materials able to function successfully.
Let us hope that this all actually means something and that we have made enough progress..
The first transparent 3D-printed skull has been successfully implanted
- By John Hewitt on March 27, 2014 at 12:00 pm
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/179289-the-first-transparent-3d-printed-skull-has-been-successfully-implanted
Three months ago, surgeons in Holland implanted a
transparent plastic skull in a woman whose skull has never stopped
growing. Incredibly, the rare bone disease that was wrecking her vision
and destroying her life has been been bested by a simple 3D printer. The
team of surgeons, led by Dr. Bon Verweij at the University Medical
Center in Utrecht, expect her new skull to last indefinitely, opening up
new vistas for cranial transformation.
The precursor to this achievement was a similar patching done last year, where 75% of a patient’s skull
was replaced with a 3D-printed implant made of polyetherketoneketone
(PEKK, a thermoplastic). While the cost and man-hours required to
bulk-machine a skull would have been prohibitive, printing to exact
specification is now routine. PEKK and its larger family of related
plastics are extremely strong and temperature resistant (for
sterilization), however, this new implant appears to be made from some
new, and rather mysterious material.
The skull, made by an
Australian firm, is actually fairly transparent. Lots of plastics can be
transparent — acrylics, polycarbonates, etc. — but the stringent
medical requirements, and also print requirements, place limits on the
possible. While the transparency may be incidental, the picture above
shows the clear advantage of such transparency: one can see the
underlying brain and vasculature. Not only is this a nice feedback to
see how things are going macroscopically, it also entices with potential
to optically image activity in the brain like never before.
The
22-year-old woman patient may not have such things immediately in mind,
and is probably just thankful to have a normal cranium. Her disorder
had caused overgrowth of her old skull from a normal thickness of 1.5
centimeters to a battle-axe busting 5cm (2 inches). While the new skull
appears permanent, details of attachment and integration to protective
layer just beneath (known as the dura, for hard layer) are not yet
publicly available. The two halves appear to be attached with standard
titanium clasps which one finds in a typical “internal fixation” kit.
These kits are simple erector sets from which the surgeon can select the
right pieces, and then bend and shape to fit unto broken bones.
The
potential to further customize these printings is huge. As a start,
simple features to capture and mate the two halves against sliding
motion may be of immediate advantage. Also, a more scalloped interface
edge to the existing skull could be built in to later models. We
previously discussed the possibility of adding provision for the kinds
of implants that are now used to augment or restore hearing
into replacement skulls. In particular, variant on the “BAHA” style
implant system which uses bone conduction like Google Glass might be
directly incorporated.
We’ll be sure to update you on this story when more information is made available — this is a big one
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