Kidneys and Child Hearts – Our Recent Real World Experiences with 3D Printing in Medicine

Mostly we make boxes.  Pretty boxes but the bulk of what we 3D Print is some sort of plastic box that people stuff electronics in to. Most of the time we also don’t really know what customers do with the objects we make for them.  But every once in a while you get involved in a project that really makes a difference. That could not be more true than two recent medical applications for 3D Printing that we worked on with Intermountain Healthcare (IHC) in Salt Lake City, Utah.

KSL, a local TV station, did a story on our IHC was deploying 3D Printing to produce better outcomes for their patients. You can view the story here.

PADT was fortunate enough to be part of two of the cases mentioned in the story.  The first was a St George man who was feeling some pain in his back. He had a scan and they found 12 kidney stones.  On top of that, his kidney was not in the right place and was distorted.  PADT helped print a model of the scan so that the doctors could just get a real feel for what they were dealing with, and then plan the surgery.

The second situation really pulled at our heart strings.  A 10 year old boy needs heart surgery and its a complicated problem. They need a model fast so we worked with Stratasy to quickly print an accurate model so that the sugeons could come up with a plan. We still have not heard how it went, they are scheduling things, but the feedback from the team was that the 3D model was extremely helpful.  We are talking life saving.

Both of these recent situations build on years of examples where we have worked the doctors and their technical assistance to convert scans of patients into usable 3D Models. If you are in the surgery or surgery planning space and want to learn more about how accurate 3D models printed directly from scan data can be used to improve patient outcome, contact PADT at info@padtinc.com and we will connect you with our 3D Printing team.