The ACO Hip Guide System, a platform of 3D surgical planning software and patient-specific surgical guides for hip surgery from Materialise, will now be joined by Consensus Orthopedics following their adoption of a version for knee surgeries earlier this year.

Smith & Nephew, the global medical technology business, unveiled their new REDAPT™ Revision Acetabular Fully Porous Cup with CONCELOC™ Technology at American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting in Orlando. The entirely porous implant are 3D Printed to allow ingrowth while mimicking structure of cancellous bone with locking screws.

Engineering firm TWI worked with metal powder technology company Metalysis to create Hip Replacements using "metal additive layer manufacturing" which uses tantalum powder, a metal which is bio-inert, to form a lattice structure with consistent strength and density. The powder is formed into solid structures using "selective laser melting" to fuse the tiny metal particles together with heat and the whole process is cost-competitive according to company.

A team of researchers from TU Delft have developed hybrid materials which can be used to 3D Print Hip Implants with enhanced bone growth and increased life-span. The new implant will combine a conventional meta-biomaterial with an auxetic one, a complex stretching property. These 3D Printed Hybrid Implants are expected to have greater longevity and fix better than current hip implants.

Endocon, a Germany-based medical device company and a GE Additive customer, has started 3D Printing a new device called Acetabular Cup Cutter for surgeons to remove hip replacement cups with cost-effectiveness and product reliability with better surgical experience. Using GE Additive’s Concept Laser Mlab Cusing 100R, which uses direct metal laser melting (DMLM) technology, Endocon 3D prints the blades for its endoCupcut in 17-4 PH stainless steel.

18-year-old Noor Fadil was diagnosed with Chondromyxoid fibroma, a rare, benign bone tumor that has grown in her pelvis, for which she reached out to Yellow Ribbon Team in Bangalore, India. The team of Doctors collaborated with Bangalore-based Osteo3D and implantcast GmbH in Germany. The surgeons removed the tumor and followed up for two years, and then team took CT and MRI scans to create a realistic digital model for planning purposes and to help design a biocompatible, patient-specific, 3D printed implant. The team designed and used 3D printed plastic guidance jigs and the First Ever Pelvic Implant of country helped her start a new life.

A 3D Printing Course Additive was released by Researchers from US and Canada, further strengthening the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2018 Hands-On 3D printing course, which aims at creating 3D Printed cranio-maxillofacial (CMF), orthopaedic, and renal cancer models using 3D Printing, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). The image processing was provided by Mimics inPrint, allowing the researchers to fabricate anatomic regions of interest from the DICOM data. Three cases were followed: Pelvic fracture, Mandible tumour and Kidney tumour where 3D printed models were used to plan the pre-operative as well as reduce time and increase efficacy of the surgeries.

A Research in London was done on Titanium Acetabular Cups made through 3D Printing comparing the designs of different 3D printed cups from multiple manufacturers which included: Delta TT (Lima Corporate, Italy) – 3D printed with electron beam melting (EBM), starting from Ti6Al4V powder; Trident II Tritanium (Stryker, USA) – 3D printed with laser rapid manufacturing (LRM), using titanium-aluminium-vanadium alloy (Ti6Al4V) powder and Mpact 3D Metal (Medacta, Switzerland) – 3D printed with electron beam melting (EBM), starting from Ti6Al4V powder. They were found to have beads, a known by-product of the manufacturing process, which may potentially be released in the human body.

L.E.Murr, a researcher from the University of Texas at El Paso, wrote an overview of how 3D printing of Metal and Alloy Implants using powder bed fusion technologies, especially with commercial laser and electron beam systems, has rapidly emerged worldwide. He emphasized on key points: Applications of solidification fundamentals to powder bed fusion fabrication; Fundamentals of powder bed fusion AM of complex and porous biomedical implants; Design strategies for fabricating porous, optimized metal and alloy biomedical implants by powder bed fusion technologies and Examples of porous, powder-bed fabricated implants which included: Custom-built cranial/maxillofacial/implants and surgical, pre-operative models; 3D printed, open-cellular structure spinal implants; 3D implant designs for total hip arthroplasty; Total knee arthroplasty and open-cellular implant components and Complex skeletal reconstruction implants: personalization of implant fabrication through hospital point-of-care, 3D printing centers.

Researchers from the Department of Orthopaedics Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, China, used 3D Printing to reduce the blood loss and surgery time in Hip fracture cases. 7 patients were assessed over a five-year period from 2012-2017, with 3D printed models created for treatment and surgical simulation. CT data was used to create 3D models of each patient’s fracture followed by trochanteric osteotomies, along with simulating intraoperative reduction and fixation techniques using the models fabricated using 3D Printing. The authors confirmed that with the use of the 3D Printed Model, they were able to reduce time in the operating room, and blood loss, but require further studies to confirm it.