…but printed bones are just wow.
An 83-year-old woman operated on last summer was the first person to receive an entire 3D-printed jaw transplant, her Belgian doctors announced Monday. The woman’s own lower jaw was riddled with infection, and given her age, and the fact that reconstructive surgery would have been a long and painful process, her doctors decided to have a new jaw specially manufactured for her. The replacement jaw is made out of titanium, assembled in thousands of layers by a 3D printer.
Rest of the story here, with a link to a paper about 3-D printing of bone substitute implants.
Well that’s just cool.
Amazing.
Wait until they can do it with organs seeded with the patient’s own cells. No more transplant rejection.
Few steps away from regeneration tanks, eh?