Surgeons at the New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattanhave used 3D-printing to save the life of a two-week-old baby born with a severe congenital heart defect (CHD) in just one operation, by practising surgery on a 3D-printed model of his heart. In this pioneering method, the surgeons took an MRI of the baby’s heart and used the data to create a 3D model of the heart to be printed, with both the data and 3D-printing funded by congenital heart defect charity Matthew’s Hearts of Hope.The doctors were then able to rehearse extremely complicated surgeries on the tiny heart model, which is less than a third of the size of an adult hand. “The baby’s heart had holes, which are not uncommon with CHD, but the heart chambers were also in an unusual formation, rather like a maze,” Dr Emile Bacha, head of cardiac surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, who performed the surgery, told 3DPrint.com.
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