3D PRINTED ORGANS COULD HELP SURGEONS PRACTICE FOR DANGEROUS OPERATIONS.

3D technology has taken the world by storm and an international team of researchers has used this technology to produce individually-tailored model organs. These dummy organs could one day improve the way surgeries are done, by allowing doctors to plan and practice a lifesaving procedure on a realistic replica before putting you under the scalpel.

Surgery is often a matter of life or death, and the ability to practice a product outside of the operating room on an artificial human, or at least the relevant organ of a patient, can help to prepare a doctor for surgery, and so increase the chances of a patient surviving the procedure.
Not all the props are born equally, and some often offer limitations as well as benefits to practising on an artificial human, as they do not accurately represent the behaviour of their biological counterpart during an operation. For example, some are made from plastic that are much tougher than the tissues of a real organ, and so do not allow physicians to practice certain aspects of an operation, such as suturing a wound.

A newly-published study has detailed the development of a different approach to creating artificial practice organs that leans heavily on a custom-built 3D printer instead.

For the purpose of the study, the team printed a series of lifelike human prostates from uniquely tailored silicone-based "inks". These inks were designed on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans and the organ samples were taken from three study participants.
It was found that the man-made organs mimicked the feel, look and mechanical properties as well as the behaviour of a real prostate to a higher degree of accuracy. The ability to create a tailored dummy organ could be extremely helpful for physicians attempting to predict the potential consequences of a surgery, stemming from the specific characteristics of an individual's organ.

"If we could replicate the function of these tissues and organs, we might someday even be able to create 'bionic organs' for transplants," comments lead researcher of the study, Michael McAlpine, an associate professor of mechanical engineering in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering. "I call this the 'Human X' project. It sounds a bit like science fiction, but if these synthetic organs look, feel, and act like real tissue or organs, we don't see why we couldn't 3D print them on demand to replace real organs."

In the long term, the artificial organs could even be used to save lives by utilizing them in more direct manner.

A paper on the study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.