Nowadays more and more hospitals start using 3D printed customized surgical guides for patients. These surgical guides are designed based on the 3D reconstruction and surgical simulation technology, aims to help the doctors to perform precision surgeries and shorten the operation time.
Recently Weihai Central Hospital has performed two intracranial surgeries, in which 3D printed surgical guide were used.
Case 1:Intracranial drainage
A male patient, who was sent to Weihai Central Hospital at 8 p.m, had a very serious intrancranial hemorrhage and the intracranial drainage surgery needed to be performed immediately. Intrancranial hemorrhage is a severe illness in neurosurgery, and the accurate and safe puncture is the key to ensure the surgery efficacy and prevent the complication. Considering the difficulty of positioning the puncture needle, the attending physician Dr. Tian Wei of Weihai Central Hospital decided immediately to use the 3D printed surgical guide after detecting the bleeding point by CT and MRI images.
SHINING 3D received this requirement from the hospital, and the medical engineer team is arranged to support this surgery. In the design, the contacting surface between the guide and the patient’s face was intentionally enlarged so that the guide could be fixed on the patient’s head more firmly and more accurately during the surgery. The engineers inserted a metal ring into the puncture hole of the guide, and then performed the high-temperature and high-pressure disinfection, in order to ensure the strength and the reliability of the surgical guide.
All the design, 3D printing and the post-processing of the surgical guide was finished in 90 minutes.
At 10:06 p.m the 3D printed surgical guide for drainage surgery was delivered to Dr. Tian Wei.
After 3 hours, the intracranial minimally invasive drainage surgery was successfully performed, and the patient got out of the danger.
After that, the hospital contacted SHINING 3D and specifically ordered a set of intracranial hematoma drainage surgery model for internal medical training and display.
Case 2: Left Brain-Sinus meningioma resection
There was a patient who was diagnosed to have an 1-diameter meningioma in the brain. The situation was serious and it was decided to resect the meningioma after medical consultation.
After consulting the medical engineer team of SHINING 3D, the chief physician Dr. Zhou of the Neurosurgery Department of the hospital decided to make a tumor positioning guide, which was used during the operation, for the accurate location of the meningioma in patent’s skull and the accurate resection.
With the help of the spiral CT thin-layer scanning data of the patient, SHINING 3D technical team located the position of the meningioma, and determined the incision position by constructing the 3D brain model. Then they printed the surgical positioning guide in a short time, which matched patient’s characteristic.
This 3D printed surgical positioning guide played a vital role during the surgery. Doctors used it to locate the size, position of the incision, and accurately completed the surgery according to the determined position.
The cooperation between Weihai Central Hospital and SHINING 3D can be tracked back to 2016. In 2018, both parties signed the strategic cooperation agreement in order to serve patients better, Since then they have accelerated their interaction and cooperation in precision medical area.
Till the end of 2019, 3D printing and 3D scanning technology have been widely used during the diagnosis and treatment by many departments of Weihai Central Hospital, such as Spinal Surgery, Neurosurgery, Oncology, Oral Surgery, Rehabilitation Medicine and so on. There have been nearly 100 cases.