Pre-operative analysis and planning in trauma, dental, training and even hospital maintenance departments are some of the fields in which alternative production technologies are already being applied successfully. But there is a lot of other research in development that poses a promising horizon for the healthcare sector and additive manufacturing.

Jobesa is a high-level educational center specialized in training in dental prosthetics with offices in Malaga and Granada that, less than a year ago and thanks to its additive manufacturing partner Grupo Solitium, has invested in 3D printing so that its students have all tools that are already used in the dental sector. Its director, Benjamín Piñeira, considers it essential that future dental technicians know how to use equipment such as Form3, designed for the rapid production of prototypes and for manufacturing, which in its Form3B version allows the use of biocompatible resins that the American manufacturer has developed thinking in the dental sector.

Jobesa’s is not an isolated case. Other companies such as Podoactiva, Xplora 3D or the Miguel Servet hospital in Zaragoza, to give three real examples, already trust Grupo Solitium and 3D printing to improve and evolve their services with excellent results. The customization, the speed in the manufacture of the parts and the significant cost savings are some of the advantages that have seduced these organizations. And they are not the only ones.

“3D printing has been proving its effectiveness for some time in different applications in the health sector in areas such as hospital maintenance, in the analysis of preoperations that reduce the possibility of error, waiting times in operating rooms and therefore the use of limited and essential resources. In this sense, trauma planning, with previous tests of screws, plates, cutting processes, surgical guides and cutting in the operating room ensure success in many cases. Likewise, the use of biocompatible resins in splints, occlusal guards and other dental applications add great value to the process and to the sector ”, lists Miguel Ángel Mora, head of Grupo Solitium’s 3D Engineering Services.

“The most common additive technologies, FDM, SLA and SLS have proven to be useful in a sector that has innovation as its main lever of change”, defends Mora, “but not just any material and technology is valid for according to what applications”, points out. In this sense, it should be noted that large companies, such as HP, are dedicating great efforts and means to achieve the adaptation of materials and technologies to the regulations and specific requirements of the sector, such as ISO 10993, which assesses biocompatibility and biological risks of the different medical teams. The latest results of the tests carried out by HP already allow us to think about applications of devices for preparation and surgical use of limited use within the body, and in contact with mucosa, blood and tissues.

3D technologies in health

The biomodels, or pieces that imitate the parts of the body destined to support doctors in the planning of some surgery or in simulations, can be made of thermoplastics such as PLA in FDM and photopolymeric resin in SLA and their options in flexible. Orthopedic insoles and those products with geometric requirements are usually produced in FDM with flexible materials or in SLS with polymers.

Formlabs SLA technology, for example, also allows the use of biocompatible resins for the production of surgical splints and guides, a material has even been developed that allows to assimilate the coloration of the teeth and gums. In the dental sector, this technology is practically implanted “and is already replacing the traditional model for obtaining a denture mold,” says the person in charge of Grupo Solitium’s 3D Engineering Services, who recalls that “intraoral scanners are now used to obtain models digital teeth from which to print molds to make, for example, invisible aligners by means of fully functional thermoforming ”.

HP Jet Fusion technology is also used by some companies, such as Gogoa, in the design and manufacture of rehabilitation wearables, exoskeleton parts of the lower limbs, intended for the rehabilitation of people who have suffered physical or neuronal injuries and need to improve their mobility; and in companies such as Podoactiva, which uses this technology to custom produce orthotic insoles for the foot. And it is that, in the field of orthotics “we have biocompatible materials in contact with healthy skin and that is where the strengths of additive manufacturing are beginning to be applied,” says Mora. In this sense, the head of Grupo Solitium’s 3D Engineering Services recalls that in many cases the patient is no longer plastered, “but rather it is scanned to obtain a personalized model of the patient’s anatomy and print a custom piece.”

In hospitals such as the Miguel Servet University in Zaragoza, its maintenance department has used, for just over two years and thanks to its additive manufacturing partner Grupo Solitium, a 3D printer and a scanner that has allowed them to produce parts, spare parts and components. , also for the area of ​​electromedicine, with significant savings in both time and cost.

Some mutuals are also considering investing in 3D printing “in the creation of anatomical models for preoperative or educational levels so that the patient better understands their problem and the solution, and what is more important: anticipate and know what the patients will face. surgeons without the need to intervene previously in the patient ”, explains Miguel Ángel Mora. “In short,” he sums up, “what they are looking for, and what we are working on with them, is to convert the images that we take through the data obtained in CT scans into 3D models, to obtain printable STL files with which to analyze the pathologies of the patients as prior work of the medical team ”.

More research

“Our effort happens because 3D technology enters the medical sector in the same way that it is entering other sectors of the industry.” In fact, there are more studies and investigations in progress that go beyond the tools and surgical guides, “Such as the one whose protagonist is elastic resin to study and predict the behavior of damaged tissues, replicating, in the case of our collaboration, an aneurysm in an aorta artery to subject it to different pulse and blood pressure cycles using advanced simulation techniques with specific hardware and software “, indicates the head of Grupo Solitium’s 3D Engineering Services, who considers that additive manufacturing in the health sector” has great potential and in fact there are numerous companies in the medical sector that have already done so. incorporated with very good results ”.