3D Printed Surgical Instruments: The Design and Fabrication Process

Abstract

BACKGROUND: 3D printing is an additive manufacturing process allowing the creation of solid objects directly from a digital file. We believe recent advances in additive manufacturing may be applicable to surgical instrument design. This study investigates the feasibility, design and fabrication process of usable 3D printed surgical instruments. METHODS: The computer aided design (CAD) package Solid Works (Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp., Waltham MA) was used to design a surgical set including hemostats, needle driver, scalpel handle, retractors and forceps. These designs were then printed on a selective laser sintering (SLS) Sinterstation HiQ (3D Systems, Rock Hill SC) using DuraForm EX Plastic. The final printed products were evaluated by practicing general surgeons for ergonomic functionality and performance, this included simulated surgery and inguinal hernia repairs on human cadavers. Improvements were identified and addressed by adjusting design and build metrics. RESULTS: Repeated manufacturing processes and redesigns led to the creation of multiple functional and fully reproducible surgical sets utilizing the user feedback of surgeons. Iterative cycles including design, production and testing took an average of 3 days. Each surgical set was built using the SLS Sinterstation HiQ with an average build time of 6 hours per set. CONCLUSIONS: Functional 3D printed surgical instruments are feasible. Advantages compared to traditional manufacturing methods include no increase in cost for increased complexity, accelerated design to production times and surgeon specific modifications.

Angle-Scanning Surface Plasmon Resonance System with 3D Printed Components for Biorecognition Investigation

“…It is simple, cost effective, and versatile. Application of FDM 3D printing technology to toys, prototypes, scientific tools, and medical equipment becomes more and more common [19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…With the expiration of 3D printing technology patents, this field has witnessed a great growth [19]. FDM (fused deposition modeling) is one of the most popular 3D printing technologies.…”

Inguinal Hernia Repair Using 3D Printed Surgical Instruments in the Cadaveric Model: A Feasibility Study

“…The design, fabrication and optimization of the general surgical set used for this evaluation has been described previously [15]. Briefly, the Computer Aided Design (CAD) package SolidWorks was used to develop digital models of the surgical instruments (Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp., Waltham MA).…”

“…For this reason the authors propose to investigate the performance of 3D printed surgical instruments in surgical procedures such as an indirect inguinal hernia repair. This study builds off of previous work designing and fabricating 3D printed surgical instruments [15]. In the current study, the authors use computer aided design software and selective laser sintering to build a general surgical set and perform an inguinal hernia repair on a human male cadaver.…”

3D Printed Surgical Instruments: The Design and Fabrication Process

“…We read with interest the novel article ''3D Printed Surgical Instruments: The Design and Fabrication Process'' by George et al [1]. We congratulate the authors on their attempt to highlight the creative aspect of knife happy surgeons, in their endeavour to refine the art of horrid butchery to making present day surgery an art.…”