How Stratasys is taking the patient-specific approach to 3D printing

MTI speaks to Stratasys about how it is working together with hospitals and medical device manufacturers to improve patient outcomes and personalise treatment.

3D printing - or additive manufacturing as it’s also known – has seen a noticeable uptake in the medical sector in recent years. Whilst its history dates back to the early 1980s, the technology has become so advanced in recent years, allowing users to 3D print objects out of a range of materials, that it has provided companies of varying sectors solutions to prototyping, mass production, education and more.

Within the healthcare market, 3D printing is expected to reach $2.3 billion by 2020, giving rise to more personalised care, pre-surgical planning and pre-clinical drug testing.

One of the major players in the 3D printing industry is Stratasys. Covering a range of sectors from aerospace to medical, the company’s expertise in 3D printing has enabled the manufacture of various new products and solutions.

In the healthcare industry Stratasys’ main customers include medical device manufacturers, hospitals and university medical research groups and companies that are creating 3D printed devices for end-use. The company’s PolyJet technology enables its customers to 3D print medical device prototypes and patient-specific anatomical models. 

Michael Gaisford, director of marketing for Healthcare Solutions at Stratasys, spoke to MPN about the work the company is doing.

“For medical device companies, our 3D printers have become the innovation engine that can enhance and accelerate the entire device life cycle. During initial development, it’s used in the rapid prototyping step– you have your concept, you want to get some feedback on it – you 3D print it and you use it to get feedback. Materials have advanced to the point where you can perform functional testing using 3D printed parts.” Gaisford explains.

Medical device partners to Stratasys are using 3D printing technology to replicate patients’ anatomy to test how well their devices work within a certain disease state. Typically, pre-clinical testing has “been done in animal models or cadavers” Gaisford says, but “the limitations of those models is that they’re not anatomically representative of a human and they often don’t have the disease state that you’re trying to treat.”

The benefits don’t stop there. 3D printed models are also giving medical device manufacturers feedback on their device’s performance faster and cheaper with more clinically relevant information compared with an animal model or a cadaver.

In hospitals surgeons can use 3D printed patient-specific models for surgical planning, giving them greater insight into their patient’s anatomy.

For example, earlier this year the Piedmont Heart Institute and Georgia Institute of Technology used Stratasys' multi-material printing technology to create patient-specific heart valve models for 18 patients suffering from heart valve disease.

Patients were due to undergo transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), a surgery often considered for those at high risk from complications with open-heart surgery.

TAVR is a minimally invasive procedure in which the patient’s aortic valve is repaired using a prosthetic valve, which fits into the aortic valve’s space. The surgery can be performed using two approaches; entering through the femoral artery, or by a small incision in the chest.

The study highlights how 3D printing can be applied to medical device testing and how it can benefit patient outcomes. By creating 3D patient-specific models, the collaborative team were able to ascertain how likely the chances were that each patient would suffer paravalvular leakage – a strong indicator of how well they will do after surgery.

The researchers used Stratasys’ PolyJet technology to create 18 visually accurate anatomical models that replicated the feel of aortic tissue. The 3D printed models demonstrated the mechanical properties of each patients’ heart valves, giving the team a way to test how well prosthetic vales would work in stopping leakage.

After placing the prosthetic valves within the 3D models, the team then placed sensors within each 3D printed model, enabling them to predict the occurrence, severity and location of paravalvular leakage after surgery.

By examining anatomically accurate models, surgeons can also determine which approach to take during surgery, Gaisford explains: “Teams using these patient specific 3D models are able to deploy the actual device that was selected for the procedure, in the model, and determine if that device is going to fit and is going to be appropriate. 

“This can really change your approach and you can imagine deploying one of these valves into a patient’s heart and then determining that there is excessive paravalvular leak and having to retract it or having to surgically repair it is a huge cost and is a huge impact to the patient.”

The study resulted in the team being able to identify a method allowing them to predict and potentially reduce the risk of paravalvular leakage after surgery. They hope that it allows them to improve patient outcomes in the future by utilising a 3D printed procedural approach.

The increasing use of 3D printing by medical device manufacturers and healthcare institutions is indicative of the technology’s potential within these settings.

Stratasys’ work in the sector is already pushing the industry towards more detailed models, made evident by its recent BioMimics service which offers complex anatomic models for medical training and device testing.

Technology has the potential to move healthcare towards more personalised treatment, saving costs, improving patient outcomes and in the case of 3D printing, perhaps alleviating some of the fear we associate with going into hospital.

“There are so many patients who go into a surgery just having to rely on the expertise of their surgeon – and we all rely on the expertise of our surgeon – but it’s really scary going into a complex procedure.” Gaisford says.

The patient-specific approach that 3D printing offers might instil you with confidence, when by holding a 3D printed model of your heart, a surgeon tells you exactly what’s going to happen during the procedure - as long as you’re not too squeamish.