3D Printer Helps Change the Life of a Four-Year Old Heart Patient

Mia Gonzalez, who had been diagnosed with a malfunctioning aorta was given a new lease on life thanks to a 3D printer. Mia had always been sickly. She often had bouts of pneumonia and colds and had difficulty breathing. She was not able to attend day care. She could not take dance classes and when she is able to go out, it does not take long for her to be winded. Always out of breath, she had to take several medications prescribed for asthma.

Several stays in hospital

Mia had stayed in the hospital ten times, and it was only after the last one that doctors finally found out that her aorta is malfunctioning. She’s just four years old and it was recommended that she’d need an operation to close off the portion of the aorta that’s pressing on her windpipe. This makes it hard for her to swallow, expel phlegm and makes it difficult for her to breathe normally.

Complicated surgery

The child’s mother, Katherine Gonzalez, said that it was already an agony for them when they were told she had asthma, and now they learned that their daughter would be having an open heart surgery. Surgeons at Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital said that the malformation of her aorta is complicated. However, with the help of 3D printing, their apprehension for the surgery had been eased.

New technology rendered the inoperable, operable

The Nicklaus Children’s Hospital got a 3D printer early in the year, which is capable of making exact reproductions of human organs. Doctors are able to do practice operations and plan surgeries with the help of the printer, which makes use of images from CT or MRI scan images from patients as its template. The printer creates the replicas in plastic or rubber.

The hospital’s director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery, Dr. Redmond Burke, studied the replica of Mia’s heart for a few weeks, used it to confer with colleagues and even carried it with him to the gym. He finally had an “aha” moment and decided to open Mia’s chest from the right, which allowed him to make a smaller incision, and therefore gave Mia shorter recovery time and less pain.

Dr. Burke ascribes the 3D model for deducting two hours off the operating time because it made it clearer for them to plan the surgery.

3D printers have been used clinically for more than 20 years to make surgical tool prototypes but it was only these past few years that the equipment had been used to print out organs. Dr. Burke said that while he has a model of an organ, he would not be saying that an operation is not possible.

In the United States, around 75 hospitals have 3D printers like the one that Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has. Around the globe, some 200 hospitals have the same model. With this technology, doctors are now able to prepare for the most complicated operations, and do it several times, until they are able to find the best possible way to operate.

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