Santosh Kumar Malyala, Y Ravi Kumar, Aditya Mohan Alwala, Praveen Vasamsetty
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is one of the latest manufacturing processes. AM technology provides patient specific customized physical model, which is almost not achievable by any other technique. AM medical models are best suitable for pre-planning of complex medical surgeries such as reconstruction of the orbital floor which has fractured due to severe craniofacial trauma. Orbital floor is formed by a very thin bone which is often fractured during trauma. Among all the injuries of the craniofacial region, orbital fractures account for about 40 percent. The restoration of the orbit to its pre-traumatic volume and anatomy is one of the most delicate and difficult procedure. However this method which involves multiple try-ins, poses a risk of injury to the important structures within the orbit. AM provides the flexibility to bend, adapt/modify the plate prior to the surgery, which saves the intra-operative surgery time. This also avoids the revision of surgery in some cases. For the current study a patient specific preplanning medical model was made at a low cost using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). Placing a reconstruction plate/mesh which was pre-adapted on a model reduces operating time, risk of soft tissue trauma, and allows precise plate positioning and restoration of orbital volume. Using the FDM medical model overall surgery time is reduced by 40 minutes.
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Journal of Surgery received 288 citations as per Google Scholar report
