Medicine is field that is advancing all the time. It can take years for new innovations to be brought to market, but I was so excited about this story that I just wanted to share it. 3-D printed medical devices are one of the newest frontiers in medicine. These devices include replacement bone, personalized plaster casts, prosthetic parts for amputees, and heart valves. Not all of these devices are available for use in humans yet. Regulatory bodies like the FDA require extensive testing before new products can be made available to the general public.
Many people don’t realize how similar medical interventions can be for animals and humans. Harvard Medical School has even begun sending its students on optional four-week rotations at Franklin Park Zoo and Stoneham’s Stone Zoo as part of a partnership with Zoo New England. The basic anatomical structures between humans and other mammals are quite similar. In some cases, techniques that were first pioneered by vets have later been used on people.
In this case, 3-D printed bones have been used in people and dogs. In 2014, a team of doctors from the University Medical Center in Utrecht carried out the world’s first partial skull transplant using plastic parts to save the life of a woman suffering from a rare condition that caused extra bone to develop inside her skull. More recently, researchers at a Canadian university printed a customized 3-D plate to replace a portion of a cancer-stricken Dachshund’s skull.
For me, the most rewarding part of being a doctor is watching injured or ill patients recover and regain control of their lives. There is nothing better than watching hope return to the eyes of someone who thought all had been lost. I welcome innovations like 3-D printed bones that can improve people’s lives, and I’m excited to see how medical technology continues to develop.
