When it comes to 3D printing, the sky is the limit. As 3D printing technology continues to advance, applications can be as far reaching as airplane and automobile parts to medical devices and even anatomically correct, biocompatible models. Although 3D printing technology is developing at a rapid pace, the technology itself is not new. It emerged in the 1980s as a means of creating rapid prototypes. In recent years the applications for 3D printed models have evolved with the available hardware, software, and printable materials. Evolving technology, paired with the creative and innovative minds of scientists, engineers, and physicians, has been the launching pad for developments within 3D printing technology specific to healthcare. One way 3D printing technology is poised to create better patient outcomes is in creating an anatomically and patient-specific models to aid in surgery and medical procedures. With the capability to 3D ...
A poloxamer gel paired with a bioadhesive can be used to reconnect blood vessels during vascular surgery without the complications associated with needle-and-thread sutures, which have been used for the past 100 years. This advance is five times faster than sewing and works on blood vessels with diameters as small as 0.2 millimeters, according to Stanford University Medical Center researchers.
“Numerous alternatives to sutures have been proposed, but none has proven superior,” the researchers write in their study published in Nature Medicine. “This new technology has a potential for improving efficiency and outcomes in the surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease.”
Rebecca Boyle reports for Popular Science that one of the researchers was inspired to work on this problem a decade ago after he has reattached the severed finger of a year-old infant during a five-hour surgery. The blood vessels in a baby’s finger measure approximately 0.5 millimeters. The microsurgeon thought about a way to fill the lumen, the inner space of a blood vessel so the ends would stay open at full diameter long enough to glue them together. Originally, he thought about using ice, but its properties weren’t practical.
Boyle explains that the microsurgeon later approached an engineering professor “about using some kind of biocompatible phase change material, which could easily turn from a liquid to a solid and back again.” The engineering professor knew about Poloxamer 407, a thermo-reversible polymer that was already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for medical use.
Poloxamers have been used to deliver drugs, including chemotherapeutics, vaccines, and antiviral therapies, and had been tested in “beating heart” surgeries. After teaming with materials scientists, they modified the poloxamer to become “solid and elastic when heated warmer than body temperature, and [to] dissolve into the bloodstream at body temperature,” Boyle writes.
The researchers have tested their technique on rat aortas. They heated the poloxamer gel with a halogen lamp and used the gel to fill up the lumen. To glue the blood vessels back together, they used an available bioadhesive. Their results showed reduced inflammation and scarring two years later.
The researchers say in a press release from Stanford University Medical Center that further testing on large animals is needed before human trials can begin, but they note that all of the components used in the technique are already approved by the FDA, and suggest that “the technique has the potential to progress rapidly from the ‘bench to bedside’.”
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