Recent Advancements and Trends in 3D Printing for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

3D printing has been applied to multiple areas since 1980. Biomedical applications have grown significantly and become the mainstream of 3D printing applications. In this review, we elucidated the publication distribution of biomedical 3D printing using the CAS Content Collection. From 2010 to 2021, journal and patent publications grew steadily, except for the decline in patent publications in 2021. In general, journal publications are higher than patents. There are approximately 90 countries participating in the 3D printing application in this field. We are reporting the publication distributions related to the following categories: (1) four major techniques: powder bed fusion, extrusion, jetting, and photopolymerization; (2) substances: polymers and inorganic substances; (3) biomedical fields: tissue/organs, orthopedic/prosthetic, pharmaceutical, and others. We investigated the correlation between these search terms and revealed the co-occurrence of the concepts appearing in publications related to 3D printing in biomedical applications. This review provides an overview of the current advancement and trends of 3D printing applications in the biomedical area.