A 60 year old man from Australia recently had the first successful surgery for implanting a 3D printed vertebrae.
Ralph Mobbs, a neurosurgeon working at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Australia, successfully performed the operation in 15 hours. The patient had a tumor at the top of the neck, where there are two highly-specialized vertebrae that are involved in the proper flexion and rotation of the head, vertebraes which the tumor had occupied.
Initially diagnosed in August of last year, the disease was identified as a virulent form of cancer known as chordoma. Without treatment, the tumor can slowly compress the brain stem and spinal chord, causing [...]
