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TGH surgeons printing 3D replicas of organs
FOX 13's Briona Arradondo reports.
TAMPA, Fla. - Everyone’s body is different, and what may work for one patient in surgery may not work for another. Doctors at Tampa General Hospital are using 3D printing as an innovative option to better treat patients.
The requests come in to the TGH/USF Health 3D printing lab to print an exact replica of a patient’s organ or simulate a complicated procedure. It starts with taking MRI or CAT scans through modeling software before going to the machines.
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"If it's a novel procedure, or if it's their unique case atF the surgeon never did something like that before. [Dr. Matar] can train on the model that before going to the procedure," said Dr. Devid Zille, the director of advanced medical imaging and 3D printing at TGH/USF Health.
Dig deeper:
Six printers run around the clock, building up one thin layer at a time. Zille said a prostate can take three hours or a congenital heart up to 70 hours.
"This was a gunshot wound. The patient lost everything, and we need to rebuild the whole face," said Zille, when speaking of a 3D print of a patient’s skull.
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Zille leads the lab, and he said the machines can do more than help in the operating room.
"One the biggest problems that we have here, we are losing some blood bags, because they're getting too cold inside of the coolers," said Zille. "Instead of having the bags go into a very low temperature, we can create that insert that will keep the blood on the proper temperature. And then we'll be saving thousands of dollars for the hospital per month because we're not throwing those bags away."
Zille said they have also printed devices to assist doctors in surgery or ways for hang tools in ambulances.
Why you should care:
Using the prints made a difference for surgeons like Dr. Fadi Matar, who is the chief of cardiology at USF Health and director of Research and Innovation Center at Tampa General Hospital. He said some scans overestimate risks for patients and count them out of procedures that could help.
"In the past, when we did not have this, we would get the CAT scan and say, we have some parameters in the CT to predict that it can happen. The problem with those, the CAT scan overreads. It gives us an overestimation of the risk," said Matar. "It really helps us fine-tune our prediction of what's going happen, the bad outcome, and then allows us to better treat and select our patients."
What's next:
The 3D print lab plans to expand to eight printers soon, Zille said. He said the lab can help out multiple departments around TGH, from OBGYNs to Ear, Nose and Throat and the Cancer Institute.
The lab director said 3D printing tech can also help medical students get a better understanding of tough cases.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Briona Arradondo during interviews with the chief of cardiology at USF Health and director of Research and Innovation Center at Tampa General Hospital, as well as the director of advanced medical imaging and 3D printing at TGH/USF Health.