14 DAY TRIAL // The human body is an immensely sophisticated piece of work, but there is one part of it that can be replaced by artificial constructs much more easily than the rest: the skeleton. Chinese doctors have just proven this.
More precisely, doctors from Xi’an, have started to replace the cancer-ridden bones of their patients with 3D printed substitutes made of titanium.
The bones were afflicted by malign tumors that would have claimed the lives of the ones suffering, unless they were removed.
Obviously, removing the hip and shoulder bones isn't exactly a lovely prospect. It's not like you can just pull them out and expect to live normally. Or survive at all.
If you remember, back when that teenager got a titanium hip implant, she'd been suffering from acute pains due to severe pelvic trauma caused by a tumor of her own, albeit a benign one.
What people like Doctor Guo Zheng from the Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University are now doing is pushing things a step even further.
And since the bones affected by the tumors hadn't been cracked or broken before the operations, it was actually pretty easy to scan and print exact titanium replicas.
Three patients have received this intervention so far, and they have all recovered not two months after going through their respective surgeries.
Moreover, the 3D printed bones cost half what normal bone implants would, and they were made far more quickly as well.
In the picture above, you have the 3D-printed prosthetic shoulder blade bone next to a real one. You can see the damage inflicted by the tumor even.
Materials other than titanium could have been used, of course, but titanium is durable and lightweight, and can be used to make porous bones.
Which, as it happens, can be quite, quite important because all those muscles and tendons you have in your shoulder and back have to knit with it somehow.
The three surgeries were performed on March 27 and April 3, 2014, but weren't reported on until now because the surgeons wanted to be able to say for sure that the interventions were a success. So they held back until the patients really were recovered.
All in all, we can safely say that all the bones in a human body can probably be replaced now, except for the vertebra making up the spine, because moving around the spine marrow without damaging it is too tricky to try on a whim.