Four adolescents have already been successfully operated on by the pediatric surgery team at the Meyer pediatric hospital in Florence using 3D printed prostheses in completely reabsorbable material and designed by the T3Ddy laboratory. All four adolescents had a malformation of the rib cage, the “pectus excavatum”: it is a depression of the anterior chest wall, which although in most cases does not lead to functional disorders, is experienced by those affected as a defect impactful aesthetic, with psychological repercussions especially in the developmental age.
The prospects now are to use the same 3D printing technique also for other pathologies, such as tumors of the chest wall. It is the first time in Europe that a completely reabsorbable sternal prosthesis has been used. For each of the patients the prosthesis was 3D printed with a particular material, the same as absorbable suture thread (polycapro-lactone). Fat cells taken from the adolescent’s thigh were grafted onto this “3D scaffold” made of absorbable material and the body completely incorporated this prosthesis. In all four cases, the last very recent one, the surgery lasted less than three hours and the patients, discharged on the second post-operative day, returned to their normal lives in less than a week. A unique trial in Europe. This was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Meyer surgeons, led in the room by Dr. Flavio Facchini, specialist in plastic and reconstructive surgery, with T3ddy, the joint laboratory supported by the Meyer Foundation, coordinated by Professor Monica Carfagni for the University of Florence and by engineer Kathleen McGreevy for Meyer and dedicated to the introduction of highly innovative 3D technologies into the hospital’s clinical practice. The technique developed at Meyer is an experimental technique and the four cases are included in a trial that uses the same device also tested in a trial carried out on adult patients at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia.
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