3-D printing technology is no longer novel and has become commonly used in a wide range of industries in recent years. The technology made its debut in the 1980s and appeared on the market in the ’90s, according to PCMag. Though these machines have been used for years to create everything from art to furniture, especially as the printers become more accessible to the public, their use in the medical field continues to advance, particularly in the realm of cardiovascular medicine.
It’s not uncommon to see 3-D printers used to build small figurines or, in the last year, straps to save the ears from the constant rubbing of surgical mask strings. More incredible, however, is that 3-D printers are working to create model human hearts. But this technology isn’t as new as one might think.
Copies of human hearts have been made using 3D printers for years, as this tool can be useful when trying to determine how best to perform heart surgery on a given patient. Models can be made using MRI scans of a patient’s heart, and
doctors can use these copies to get a better look at how to approach a procedure beforehand, according to an article in New Atlas.
In 2014, for instance, the J.B. Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville produced a 3-D-printed model of a child’s heart, enabling surgeons to repair the actual heart defect in just one operation.
These models have historically been made out of rubber or hard plastic, and though this allows doctors to plan out procedures before they enter the operating room, the models themselves cannot be practiced on. Now, thanks to the work of researchers such as Adam Feinberg, a professor and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, life-sized, 3-D-printed heart models can be made out of biological material through a process called bioprinting – 3-D printing with biological materials as opposed to traditional ones. Models printed out of soft biological materials tend to fall apart when printed normally. But in a research paper authored by Feinberg and several others, researchers explore an approach called Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH), which offers a way of printing copies of hearts and other organs without fear that they will fall apart.
FRESH, according to an article in New Atlas, prints with “bioink” or alginate, a natural polymer with a gel-like consistency, into a support bath, also with a gel-like consistency. In the article, Feinberg explains why printing with this biological material requires a different approach compared to a plastic or rubber model.
“The challenge with soft materials – think about something like Jell-O that we eat – is that they collapse under their own weight when 3-D printed in air,” Feinberg says in the article. “We developed a method of printing these soft materials inside a support bath material. Essentially, we print one gel inside of another gel, which allows us to accurately position the soft material as it’s being printed, layer by layer.”
According to Feinberg’s research paper, after printing a heart based on a patient’s MRI scan, the support gel, which is stable at room temperature, melts at 37 degrees Celsius. This leaves just the model heart behind to be not just examined, but also cut, stitched and generally practiced upon before the patient is even in the operating room.
Tess Wells is an editorial assistant. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
