3-D printers a revolutionary frontier for medicine.
What is 3-D printing?
Additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, use a digital model to build an object of any size or shape—by adding successive layers of material in a single continuous run. This layering capability allows the manufacturing of complex shapes, such as the intricate structure of bones or vascular channels, that would be impossible to create by other methods.
Advances in computer design and the ability to translate medical imaging—such as X-rays, computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or ultrasound—to digital models that can be read by 3-D printers are expanding its applications in health care. 3-D printing is opening a horizon of amazing possibilities, such as bioprinting living tissues with "biological ink".
An advantage of 3-D printing technology is that it allows for personalization of health care—customized prostheses and tailor-made drugs and organs, for example. This technology may also decrease costs by disrupting supply chains and lowering the production costs of medical devices, surgical instruments and other health-care products.
In 2013, there were 10 million 3-D-printed hearing aids in circulation worldwide. This huge impact in the hearing aid industry has been called the "quiet revolution" as it has gone almost unnoticed. Before 3-D printing, it took one week to manufacture a hearing aid; now it takes only a few hours. The development of sophisticated and accurate 3-D oral scanners and new 3-D printing dental materials has also catapulted 3-D printing as a disruptive technology in dentistry.
In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration Agency (FDA) approved 3-D printing denture material and this set the stage for dentists to introduce 3-D-printing manufacturing laboratories into their offices. The idea of producing crowns, orthodontic appliances or removable dentures with a push of a button in your dentist's office is not Printing living organs. An exciting area with huge potential for the future is the manufacturing of 3-D-printed drugs. The first 3-D-printed drug approved by the FDA is the anti-seizure medication Sprint am. The 3-D printing process enables the creation of a highly porous structure that can load a large dosage of the active compound into a rapidly dissolvable pill.
This possibility of highly personalized drugs, which optimize beneficial effects while reducing side effects, made in real-time using digital recipes could radically change the pharmaceutical industry. One of the most promising 3-D printing technological advances is the bioprinting of living tissue. Great strides have been made in manufacturing tissue constructs that could eventually be used for organ transplants.
The clinical manufacturing of biologically active complex structures such as functional skeletal muscle or liver tissue is promising. The recent commercialization of functional human liver or kidney constructs—the so-called "lab on a chip organ"—will have a huge impact on medical research, drug discovery and toxicology. It could possibly reduce the need to use experimental animal models. Although we may be far away from surgery on Mars using 3-D printing technology, the advances on earth are already changing health care.
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