Doctors use Additive Manufacturing / 3D printing for perfect fit hip joint replacement
May 27, 2014
Doctors at the UK’s Southampton Hospital have used a replacement hip joint made by the metal Additive Manufacturing / 3D printing of titanium powder which they say was designed using the 71 year old patient’s CT scan.
The implant will provide a new socket for the ball of the femur bone to enter. Behind the implant and between the pelvis, doctors have inserted a graft containing bone stem cells. The graft acts as a filler for the loss of bone. The patient’s own bone marrow cells have been added to the graft to provide a source of bone stem cells to encourage bone regeneration behind and around the implant.
Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Douglas Dunlop, who performed the replacement, said that “the titanium used to make the hip is more durable and has been 3D printed to match the patient’s exact measurements. The bone graft material that has been used has excellent biocompatibility and strength and will fill the defect behind the bone well, fusing it all together”.
Over the past decade Dunlop and Professor Richard Oreffo, at the University of Southampton, have developed a translational research programme to drive bone formation using patient skeletal stem cells in orthopaedics.
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