Patient Robert Begent was treated with Kidney Transplant last year at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital in London by Professor Prokar Das Gupta, a consultant urological surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas. The surgery was aided by 3D Printing Technology in form of 3D Printed model. And this live surgery was recorded, which was shown at Worldwide Robotic Surgery 24-hour event by Worldwide Robotic Surgery Education (WRSE) recently.

A team of researchers in tissue engineering, 3D biofabrication, biomaterials design and stem cell differentiation at Harvard’s Wyss Institute is working on 3D Printing a Functioning Kidney Subunit with current work to build branched vascular network unique to each organ. Using advanced 3D Bioprinting from Wyss Institute, Dr. Jennifer Lewis’s organ-on-chips are ready, using special polymer inks for creation of structures made up of human cells, complete with vasculatures and extracellular matrices.

Pauline Fenton, a 22-year-old mother from Belfast was living with end-stage kidney disease, and was completely reliant on dialysis until her 45 year old father; William volunteered to donate one of his kidneys. William had a potentially cancerous cyst on the kidney he was going to donate which was successfully removed using axial3D printed model of his kidney, and the transplant took place successfully.

Luke Massella was born with Spina Bifida, a medical condition that causes gap in spine, which required multiple surgeries to be able to walk. However, he faced bladder malfunction and kidney failure, for which Dr. Anthony Atala of Boston Children’s Hospital developed 3D Printed Bladder using Massella’s bladder tissue and modified 3D inkjet machines. The 14 hour surgery of transplantation of 3D Bioprinted Urinary Bladder was successful saving the now 27 year old Massella.

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.