3D Printer Industry has A Bright Future

According to the report "analysis and forecast of global 3D printing material market (2016-2022)" released by the media recently, in 2022, the global 3D printing material market will reach 1.52 billion US dollars, and the dental and medical industry has become an important driving force.

Recently, the combination of 3D printing and medical field is a step further.

The Department of Urology, Nanyuan hospital, Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University Medical College has dominated the medical field. It has successfully applied 3D printer technology to treat urinary diseases for the first time in the world.

For the world's first 3D printing urinary disease, the operation was originally a sacral nerve stimulator implantation, which belongs to a new minimally invasive treatment method, that is, a small programmable device was implanted in the buttocks, and the symptoms of incontinence patients were treated by remote external devices. The device includes pulse generator, electrode and wire connecting them, which has been widely used in clinic.

According to the media, this kind of surgery is minimally invasive technology, which has made great progress compared with more traditional technology, but there are still some problems. "Because the sacrum is very small, it is very difficult to implant electrodes through intraoperative puncture, which will take hours, and doctors and patients may also have radiation risks."

According to the introduction of LV Jianwei, deputy chief physician of Urology, the 3D printing technology adopted in this operation can accurately simulate the real object, and fully understand the anatomical characteristics of the sacral nerve and sacral foramen of the patient, so as to facilitate the research and design of the implant scheme for doctors. This technology only needs to insert the customized 3D model and electrode at the reserved point, and the time is shortened to 5 minutes.

This is undoubtedly a solid step for precision medicine. According to the official website, the hospital is currently applying for a national patent for the technology. "With the demand of precision medicine and rapid rehabilitation medicine, 3D printing technology will be widely used and become one of the hot spots in the development of medical field." Said Xue Wei, director of urology.

Three possibilities for medical and 3D printers

In fact, 3D printers have been born as early as the 1990s. In recent years, the popularity of maker culture has attracted much attention in this industry. The application field of 3D printer is very wide, from industrial level to consumer level. Looking around the current market, the combination of 3D printer and medical treatment is "from shallow to deep, from easy to difficult", including the following three aspects.


The first is the external device, which is also the initial application field of 3D printer in the medical field. It mainly plays the role of "assistant". For example, 3D model, rehabilitation aids, etc.

This kind of application is relatively difficult to implement and has strong universality. For example, e-nable, a public welfare organization, makes prosthetic limbs for disabled children at a low price, which costs only about $100. Another example is that Xiangya Hospital of Central South University successfully used 3D technology to assist surgeons in surgery last year, but this process only used 3D visualization technology modeling before surgery, and used 3D printing model for surgery planning, which is still a means of auxiliary surgery in fact, in the primary stage of 3D printing.

The second is implants, the most common applications should be dentistry and orthopedics, but now they are also applied to the human body.

According to Lei Feng, in fact, Renji south hospital used 3D printing last year to successfully block the left atrial appendage. It is also a minimally invasive procedure to reduce the risk of long-term disability or death from thromboembolism in patients with AF. At present, after clinical verification and successful introduction of domestic hospitals, the treatment scheme is watchman occluder, but the shape of the left atrial appendage varies from person to person, so it is necessary to know the shape of the left atrial appendage of patients very well during implantation. In this operation, doctors make a occluder model of the left atrial appendage by using the fine CT scanning image of the patient's left atrial appendage, and then make a personalized operation plan.

The third stage of 3D printer in medical application is biological printing, which uses body tissue solution and ink-jet technology to directly print organs, such as blood vessels, nerves and skin. This bioengineering application is in the stage of research and development, and has not been really used in the clinical field.

In addition, some researches use 3D bio printing technology to assist doctors to evaluate the efficacy of new drugs. The printed tissue can monitor the drug interaction of different organs in real time, so as to speed up the iteration.

sources from: https://creality3dpro.store/blogs/news