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Mollie Jones
11/28/14
WRTC 358
The Future of Healthcare: Saving Lives One Printer at a Time
An average of 79 people receive an organ transplant each day here in the U.S.
However, an average of 18 people also die each day in this country while waiting for
an organ. It’s no secret that business is booming, but without enough donors to
support the practice, it cannot grow, and in the healthcare field that means a
difference between life and death. To combat this, scientists are taking an innovative
approach and attempting to teach an old dog new tricks.
That old dog would be the household printer. Well, not quite. Three-
dimensional printers have been around since the 80s, but they have just recently
made their way into the healthcare field. As Zbigniew Starosolski and associates
explained in their study of 3D printing, there have been several recent eyebrow-
raising uses for these printers outside of the medical field. For example, an architect
has attempted to print a whole house, while a college student released ideas for a
printed gun, which caught on to popularity and was eventually removed by the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.
Whatever the use for the printers may be, though, they all take the same
basic approach: by building upward from a base. Scientist Huotilainen and
companions elaborated, saying that, “A popular analogy is ‘3D printing’, where a
stack of layers is printed one by one, ultimately forming the desired object.” For a
more in-depth explanation, Andrew Chastain, who is the manager at a printer

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manufacturing company and member of MakeHaven (an organization that supports
projects in biology, technology, etc), reported from an interview recently concerning
the subject. As he illustrated, the idea behind these printers is the taking of a digital
image of an object and then printing it out layer by layer until you have a completed,
feasible item. This method, he stated, is far more efficient and effective than the
usual approach, saying that, “traditional manufacturing is, you start with a raw piece
of material, a billet of iron or whatnot, you drill it and machine it and that’s what you
need to do. You have to cut away all that you don’t need, but you also have to design
it and plan it so that it can be cut away. But with 3-D printing, you can just say, I
need this shape to have a structure that’s going to be supporting in a certain way
and you can print that.”
So what exactly can these printers do to help the current organ donor
shortage? The hope is to one day be able to print a useable organ specifically
designed for the patient in need. There is already promising research to support this
idea, and there have even been successful uses of this approach. As Jordan Miller
cites in “The Billion Cell Construct: Will Three Dimensional Printing Get Us There?”
this practice was recently used to successfully treat an infant in respiratory distress.
Doctors used a noninvasive anatomical scan to map the “tracheal defect.” In other
words, breathing was inhibited due to an issue with a windpipe in the patient’s
throat. Doctor’s then designed and printed a tracheal splint that served keep the
collapsed windpipe open, allowing the infant to breathe. The patient exhibited a
major improvement in respiration, and the splint is expected to be fully resorbed by
the body within three years.

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There is evidence to suggest that the 3D printers can be used in bone
replacement as well. Normally, a material called BioOssVR is used for things such as
knee and hip replacements, with small bits of other substances, which we’ll call HAP
and TCP, mixed in. These two additives are not the main ingredients used because
thus far there is no way to shape their scaffolds (solid forms that cells can grow on
and be implanted into the body) to the specific desired dimensions the way
BioOssVR can. As of now, they are available as ordinary blocks, which cannot be
customized for individual patients. However, there is hope that individual three-
dimensional scaffolds can be built from TCP or HAP powder layer by layer using 3D
printers. That way, they have precise dimensions and customizable characteristics
such as pores, etc. In a recent study done by Patrick Warnke and associates, the
biocompatibility of these additives was tested to see if they would be plausible to
use as main components of the bone replacements. The results were positive,
suggesting that both HAP and TCP were able to grow the human cells, with HAP
being even more biocompatible than BioOssVR. These results easily give cause for
future studies to test the HAP in vivo (in the body).
Along with printing organs and bones, 3D printers have even shown promise
in manufacturing the instruments surgeons would use to implant the printed vessel
as well. In a study published in the Journal of Surgical Research by Timothy Rankin
and associates, the durability and effectiveness of a printed retractor in surgical
practice was tested. In order to be considered an option for further use, the
retractor had to be hypoallergenic, strong enough to retract human tissue, and
withstand sterilization. The printed tool did, in fact, stand up to the test. The

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experiment was repeated five times, with all five retractors withstanding around 29
pounds of pressure before breaking (it normally takes just a few pounds of pressure
to retract tissue on a human). When the retractors did break, however, they all
exhibited clean and predictable fractures, decreasing the threat of foreign shards
entering the body through the wound. The printed retractors were also sterile when
first printed, meaning if they were printed in the sterile operating room itself, the
instruments would be ready for use literally “fresh off the press.” Printing the
instruments also proved to be cost effective, as it costs about $0.46 per retractor,
and to buy a stainless steel one costs about $23.00. Meaning that, even if the
retractors were for one time use, they would still be more cost-efficient than the
steel ones; the printer would also pay for itself after printing just 95 retractors.
Adding to the list of benefits in the healthcare field, 3D printing also holds
hope for pharmaceuticals. As Miller also explained in the article “The Billion Cell
Construct…”, widespread drug testing can become more direct and efficient by using
the fabricated human cells from 3D printers, eliminating the need for subjects. The
major development, though, is the chance for a new type of drug testing altogether.
Because individual patient responses to specific drugs are uncertain, scientists could
theoretically take cells cultured from the specific patient and test various drug and
dosage options, finding the most effective therapy before drugs ever enter the
particular body in question.
These possibilities are not as far fetched as they may seem, considering the
printers themselves are becoming more and more available to the general public. As
Starosolski and associates attested to, “In our laboratory we use a Replicator model

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printer, a low-end consumer device manufactured by MakerBot that sells for less
than $2,000…communication with the printer is done using the USB port…the
software is also capable of generating an output file that can be transferred to the
printer on a standalone device such as a SanDisk memory card.” Herein shown is
that anyone with a USB, standard SD card, and little cash can single-handedly
become the future face of medicine. More professional grade printers are available,
however, their price tag can be as upwards as $10,000. Many experts suggest this
price will drop into the $2,000 range by 2016, though. And likewise, following this
availability comes the likelihood for even more advances in modern medicine.
As Chastain noted, these printers do a great job of bringing us full circle, connecting
the digital age with real world issues.

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Works Cited
 Hitt, Jack. "If You Print It, They Will Come." Interview by Andrew Chastain.
Virginia Quarterly Review 6 Oct. 2014: n. pag. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
 Huotilainen, Eero, et al. "Imaging Requirements For Medical Applications Of
Additive Manufacturing." Acta Radiologica 55.1 (2014): 78-85.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
 Miller, Jordan. "The Billion Cell Construct: Will Three-Dimensional Printing Get
Us There?" PLoS Biology 12.6 (2014): n. pag. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
 Rankin, Timothy, Nicholas Giovinco, Daniel Cucher, George Watts, Bonnie
Hurwitz, and David Armstrong. "Three-dimensional Printing Surgical
Instruments: Are We There Yet?" Journal of Surgical Research (2014): n.
pag. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
 Rengier, F., A. Mehndiratta, H. Tengg-Kobligk, C. Zechmann, R.
Unterhinninghofen, H. Kauczor, and F. Giesel. "3D Printing Based on
Imaging Data: Review of Medical Applications." International Journal of
Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery 5.4 (2010): 335-41. Springer
International Publishing, 15 May 2010. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
 Starosolski, Zbigniew, et al. "Application Of 3-D Printing (Rapid Prototyping)
For Creating Physical Models Of Pediatric Orthopedic Disorders."
Pediatric Radiology 44.2 (2014): 216-221. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
 "The Need Is Real: Data." Organdonor.gov. U.S. Department of Health and
Human Serivces, 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2014.
 Warnke, Patrick H., Hermann Seitz, Frauke Warnke, Stephan T. Becker, Sureshan
Sivananthan, Eugene Sherry, Qin Liu, Jörg Wiltfang, and Timothy
Douglas. "Ceramic Scaffolds Produced by Computer-assisted 3D Printing
and Sintering: Characterization and Biocompatibility Investigations."
Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials
93B.1 (2010): 212-17. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.