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Man Saves Wife's Sight By 3D Printing Her Tumor

Posted by Soulskill on from the insurance-companies-to-soon-require-full-body-prints dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Michael Balzer, a former software engineer and Air Force technical instructor, found himself unsatisfied with a doctor's diagnosis of a small tumor behind his wife's left eye. Balzer had recently become proficient at creating 3D models, so he asked the doctor for the raw medical imaging data and took a look himself. In addition to correcting a later misdiagnosis, Balzer 3D printed models of his wife's cranium and helped neurosurgeons plan a procedure to remove the tumor, instead of waiting to see how it developed, like previous doctors had recommended. During the procedure, surgeons found the tumor was beginning to entangle her optic nerve, and even a six-month wait would have had dire consequences for her eyesight.

Medical researchers like Dr. Michael Patton believe this sort of prototyping will become "the new normal" in a very short time. He says, "What you can now do through 3D printing is like what you're able to do in the software world: Rapid iteration, fail fast, get something to market quickly. You can print the prototypes, and then you can print out model organs on which to test the products. You can potentially obviate the need for some animal studies, and you can do this proof of concept before extensive patient trials are conducted.

7 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. This could be fun.... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most medical imaging equipment will dump out a DICOM file, which, IIRC, can be translated into the more typical 3D formats. So pretty much everybody that gets a CT or MRI could get the data. Then you just have to set up the printer.

    I could see this as a growth industry for hospitals (hey, we need the money) - instead of getting some miserable little CD with your image, you get a plastic skeleton (or plastic squishy part). Coffee table discussion item or new D&D figurine?

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    1. Re:This could be fun.... by hawguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And the 3D printer will have to be FDA approved and cost well over 22 million dollars.

      Not quite... Since it's not actually PART of the imager itself, it needn't be FDA approved. However, if it were .... yes. We had a generic hard drive fail on our CT. Just a typicall 400 GB SATA drive. We had literally dozens of them hanging around but we couldn't use it because they were not special FDA approved generic SATA hard drives. No special firmware needed - the console for the CT runs a GE version of Linux (you can see this as it boots). All the drive did was hold the images temporarily. It couldn't kill the patient unless you threw it at them. But we had to shut the machine down for 48 hours until they could FexEx a drive to Anchorage and commercial jet it in.

      So, we'd probably only charge $2000 for the gizmo (the specialist time would be included since they are not a doctor - you can only add special charges for doctors).

      See, you feel better already.

      If physicians are using the 3D printed model to plan their surgery, how could it not require approval? If the printer sometimes misprints by a mm that could make the difference between a successful surgery and accidentally severing an important nerve, so it seems that the manufacturer would need to test and certify a printer to ensure that it creates accurate models, otherwise they have no assurance that whatever cheap 3D printer the hospital buys at Walmart prints accurately with their software.

      The FDA regulates computer monitors used to view medical imaging, so I don't see why they wouldn't regulate 3D printers used to "print" that same imaging data.

  2. Anyone else concerned? by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is ist just me or is anyone else actually concerned that a have-a-go engineer can apparently quite easily achieve significantly bettr results than a team of so-called expert doctors in their own field?

    1. Re:Anyone else concerned? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No surprise here. I've recently had to deal with doctors of various kinds, and found many (though not all) to be myopic, stubborn and deeply conservative, reluctant to consult outside their own area of expertise, prone to seek the cause of unknowns outside their own area of expertise ("It's not X, go see a specialist for Y"), and having a disturbing lack of curiosity. Maybe I expect too much of them, but doctors act a lot more like technicians than scientists or researchers. There was an article (in the Economist I believe) about health care being one of the least innovative disciplines. The science of medicine has progressed, but there's been relatively little progress in the way we diagnose and treat patients. Some doctor proudly spoke about how they now employ checklists similar to those being used by pilots, to reduce errors in surgery. A great innovation... which they could have known about and implemented about 50 years ago.

      There are plenty of examples of desperate patients nudging their doctors in the right direction after doing some self-diagnosis and research online. There are also some examples of extraordinary breakthroughs in medical science made by engineers with no medical background.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:Anyone else concerned? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      but doctors act a lot more like technicians than scientists or researchers.

      Doctors are much more like technicians. You don't want doctors "experimenting" on you unless you really, really need that. Physicians are typically not brought up in a 'science' environment (question assumptions, learning how to research a topic, critical thinking.) Doctors are brought up in 'cram mode'. Dump a lot of into down your throat. You're expected to believe it. They are increasingly taught to 'follow the protocol' which amazingly, is what technicians do.

      Yes, there are 'physician scientists' but they aren't treating the majority of patients and you don't want them to be ('hey that looks interesting, what happens when I tug on it?').

      This case is interesting as the husband of the patient kicked the docs out of 'technician' mode. And, of course, used a 3D printer.

      ALWAYS ask your doc questions about stuff you don't understand.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Re:3d printing irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The key to success here might have been simply the push for a second opinion. People don't understand that doctors often base their decisions on best practices, and in this case maybe the normal thing for an oncologist would be wait and see how the tumor developed, working out better for 99% of cases. Getting an actual neurosurgeon to look into it was probably the biggest thing, and the 3d print was only useful in catching their attention.

    Granted, 99% of people who tried something like this would have the neurosurgeon look at it, pat them in the head for a good job on the print and then get sent back, as that's the right thing to do. Those are not newsworthy, but that doesn't mean this exception will be the new rule.

    I'd bet on VR to be more useful for doctors as you can see the results right away instead of waiting for the print though.

  4. I'll take that baby in the store front... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I drove past a store front in Silicon Valley that offered to print a 3D model of an unborn child from ultrasound scans. Alrighty...