Medical Design Briefs - December 2022 - 30

Using 3D Printing to Aid in Planning Tumor Removal
T
he SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital's pediatric
maxillofacial surgery team has used
3D printing technology to successfully perform
a complicated operation to resect a malignant
tumor in an 11-year-old boy. Given the complexity
of the operation, the medical team, led
by Dr. Josep Rubio, head of the maxillofacial
surgery unit at SJD, decided to carry out preoperative
planning and simulation using BCN3D's
technology and 3D anatomical models of the
parts of the patient's skull.
The planning consisted of the 3D design of
the anatomy of the limits of the resection to be
performed in the subsequent intervention, creating
an image of the skull and the patient's
tumor, which was then 3D printed in the hospital's
3D printing laboratory.
The medical team and radiologists printed
both pieces using BCN3D's W27 3D printer
from the Epsilon series. The printer's double
extruder head and the use of acrylonitrile butadiene
styrene (ABS), provides the necessary
realism for the doctors to plan the actual surgical
intervention based on the exact resection of
the entirety of the child's eye tumor, a facial
osteosarcoma.
" The goal of the surgery was to remove a
child's tumor located in his cheekbone and to
remove the tumor with safe margins. To do
this we used 3D planning to delimit the limits
of the resection. Nowadays, 3D planning at
the SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital is standard
practice in maxillofacial surgery, especially
in very complex cases such as the one we
dealt with in this child, " says Rubio. " We had
to create cutting and positioning guides to
transfer the virtual planning from the computer
to the operating theatre. This has allowed
us to execute what we designed virtually
with precision to be able to extract the safety
margins next to the tumor as previously designed. "
The
aim of the surgery was to remove Andrés'
tumor, which was lodged in the cheekbone,
and to remove it with safe margins.
That's when 3D printing technology came
into play to plan the operation and accurately
delineate the tumor in the cheekbone eye.
The planning consisted of the 3D design of the anatomy of the limits of the resection to be
performed in the subsequent intervention. (Credit: BCN3D)
n Little Andrés' Illness
" 3D printing helped us avoid potential postoperative
complications and improved the quality for both the patient
and the surgical process. After weeks of surgical planning,
we were able to perform a complete resection of the
lesion and also preserve the patient's vision, " says Dr. Adaia
Valls, maxillofacial surgeon at SJD Barcelona Children's
Hospital.
30
Andrés, who was not the first to present with cancer, was diagnosed
with retinoblastoma when he was 11 months old.
When his parents took him to be treated at SJD Barcelona Children's
Hospital in 2016, the medical team decided to change
his prosthesis in his right eyeball.
After two years of treatment to treat the first tumor, he recovered
with a specific treatment. However, as Andrés was a carrier
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Medical Design Briefs, December 2022
The team created cutting and positioning guides to transfer the virtual planning from the computer to
the operating theatre. (Credit: BCN3D)

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Medical Design Briefs - December 2022

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