It's not just bone injuries that are being addressed

Oct 20, 2014 14:14 GMT  ·  By

Medical applications for 3D printing technologies are already many, but most of them are macroscopic, the type that yields results you can pick up and turn in your palms as it were. Other areas are benefiting too, though, like cancer treatment.

Admittedly, we've heard about successful cancer countermeasures involving 3D printing before. In fact, a 3D model revealed a brain tumor and helped remove it safely not long ago.

We also can't forget the 3D printed livers being used in drug tests, or the 3D bioprinting techniques being researched for skin grafts and such.

Now, though, a group of scientists from China are exploring something a bit more radical, involving radioactive treatments for cancer.

The template for radioactive seed implantation cancer surgery

This development comes from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China, where Professor Feng Tiehong has utilized a 3D printed template model to destroy the cancer in a young woman.

Said cancer was located in the maxillary sinus area and would have killed her like all cancer if not treated, but normal treatment would have had repercussions as well.

Basically, the treatment would have consisted in an invasive surgery that would have left major scars on her face, to say the least.

Radioactive seed implantation is, in layman’s terms, a sort of radiotherapy that is injected into the tumor area, instead of the person being bombarded with radiation in the hopes that the cancer would die before the patient themselves did.

Usually, titanium is injected into cancer tissue, where the radioactivity kills the malignant cells. Prostate cancer is treated this way, but other tumors are eligible as well, as we can clearly see. Each radioactive seed is around the size of a grain of rice and reaches 17 mm / 0.66 inches in radiation radius. It's a good thing that cancer cells are a lot more vulnerable to it than living tissue.

Where 3D printing came in

Based on a number of CT and ultrasound scans (which are normally used as the guidelines), a 3D model of the affected area was built, which was then used to plan where and how to make the injections.

CT scans were only needed twice instead of a myriad of times, and the implantation was much more precise, improving treatment effectiveness and reducing the impact on the surrounding area. As an added bonus, what would have taken 2 hours became a 30-minute surgery.