Organ transplant facilitated using 3D technologies

Surgeons at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London have used 3D printing to increase the success rate of complex organ transplants in young children. They have recently completed a complex operation with a 2-year-old boy named Dexter Clark who had been suffering from a kidney problem since birth. It was his father, Brendan Clark, who gave him a kidney. In order to better prepare for this operation, doctors printed two 3D models, one of a kidney and the other an abdomen, from a 3D scan.

The use of 3D technologies in the medical field is becoming more common, offering the possibility of creating fully customized devices but also to design more realistic post-operative models adapted to the training of surgeons. The French Startup BIOMODEX has made it the heart of their business: they manufacture 3D printed, anatomical models to better train doctors before an operation, thus reducing the number of medical errors that could be potentially fatal. 3D technologies are also facilitating organ transplants by providing a better simulation and anticipation for what the surgeons can expect during the real surgery.

The 3D printed kidney and abdomen models

A complex kidney transplant

Dexter was born with a kidney problem that forced him to be fed using a gastric tube. Ultimately needing another kidney, his father wanted to give him one of his kidneys, but as he was much taller than the average adult, it was too wide for a 2-year-old. The surgeons were therefore quite worried about the possibility of implanting this kidney in Dexter’s abdomen safely.