Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, stated that his company will be able to 3D print partial organs within the next 4-6 years. These partial organs could be used to repair damaged organs, such as the liver, providing valuable time to patients as they await a full transplant.

Recently at UCLA, doctors were able to use a 3D printed heart model to go forth with a very complicated surgery on 66-year-old Richard Whitaker. Whitaker had been suffering from congestive heart failure, which resulted in two hospital stays over a period of months, and needed something done in order to save his life.

Heart specialists at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital have just 3D printed the first model of a patient’s heart using combined data from imaging techniques. The hybrid 3D printed model has significantly more detail than models created using standard techniques.

According to Materialise’s Board Chairman, Peter Leys, "Materialise highly anticipates working closely together with Fuwai Hospital, and Chinese regulatory authorities, to enable doctors and patients to benefit from 3D Printed heart models.

Australian physicians are taking advantage of 3D printing to create an exact replica of the patient's cardiac anatomy when planning left atrial appendage (LAA) closure procedures with the Watchman (Boston Scientific) device.

Anne Garcia, a parent of an infant heart patient, began OpHeart as a way to advance the idea of cheap 3D printed heart models for infants to help parents better advocate for their children. 

“We are harnessing the latest technologies such as 3-D printing to help us better address the most complicated cases,” said Dr. Jamil Aboulhosn, director of the Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center. 

Sahas Softech LLP, based in India, is now making 3D printed heart exact replica models available for pediatric surgery.

A team of surgeons in Dublin, Ireland recently utilized a 3D printed, color coded heart model to aid them in the preparation and performance of heart transplant surgery

A popular Mechanics article interview Wake Forest University team about their plans to 3d print using lab-grown heart cells.

After being diagnosed for congenital heart defect, Jemma Starks, received 3 open-heart surgeries. Preparing for the fourth surgery, the surgeons are delighted to use exact copy of Jemma's heart made from 3D printing. The family is happy to know what exactly are they dealing with before preparing for treatment and surgeries.

Mia Gonzalez, a 5 year-old girl received a successful open heart surgery at Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital after the surgeon used the 3D Printed model of her heart. Mia was suffering from congenital defect, Double aortic arch, which had been misdiagnosed as Asthma. Surgeon Dr. Redmond Burke visualized the whole operation before it could be actually performed.

Scientists are now working with Computer simulation and 3D Printing to develop faster and safer ways of testing medical devices without actually installing them in live humans. Since these medical devices for heart and vascular diseases will be tested on 3D Printed models, the long list of Animal testing, Clinical trials and FDA approval will be surpassed.

Chinese University and the University of Hong Kong have introduced personalised models of complex heart structures using 3D Printing technology. The actual heart structure is first captured via ultrasound imaging, followed by the creation of a silicone model which takes two days. It has been applied on 3 patients, first being a 78 year old woman with several strokes. With this, doctors can now determine proper size of occluder.

Researchers from the Cybernetics Department of the Military University of Technology in Warsaw have developed 3D Printed Artificial Hearts from Zortrax M200 3D printers, which are currently being used for research purpose solely. However, company is looking forward to use these Artificial 3D Printed Hearts as transplants in patients.

3D Printed Hearts have been used by surgeons since long as the perfect virtual guide to surgeries. Since the Jump Trading Center of OSF Saint Francis Medical Center opened back in 2013, there have been alot of advancement, and now they have whole library with more than 40 3D printed hearts.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University (Israel) have managed to engineer a Nanotech ‘heart patch’ which could enable remote monitoring and regulation of a patient’s heart. Currently replacing the infarcted heart muscle, it is worked upon to sense acute attacks and deliver drugs instantly in response to heart damage.

Chinese doctors from People's Hospital of Jilin successfully performed an open heart surgery on a nine-month-old baby suffering from Congenital Heart Defect called a Total Pulmonary Venous Anomalous Drainage, using a 3D printed heart model to plan the surgery. A full-sized heart replica modeled the boy's cardiac structure which assisted for virtual surgery.

Scientists from TechShot, developed a method to 3D Print structures in zero gravity, pioneering for space future programs. Printing a viable heart structure, scientists believe that this method of using low-viscosity bio-inks and finer printer tips will open doors for space-based bioprinter for human healthcare.

Doctors at King’s College Hospital in London, UK have begun exploring using 3D imaging to perform more complex surgeries laparoscopically. Thoracoscope, a tool with two cameras is used for Endoscopy Assisted Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, however, it has been used for minor surgeries like gall bladder and prostate operations so far.

A medical team of 8 members at Hong Kong-based Queen Elizabeth Hospital team used 3D printing technology to create a detailed heart model of their 77-year-old patient Shum. The medical specialists performed a surgery that involved the replacing of two heart valves through blood vessels in a single operation. The surgery with 3D Printing involved minimal invasiveness and was completed in just four hours.

3D Bioprinting is being used in laboratories to produce hearts, livers, kidneys, etc. and no doubt, will be printed in reality for organ transplantation in real patients. But this on the other side, has increased the risk of black market and the ways bad guys will be utilizing these 3D Printed Organs. Since these organs will be available for normal people easily, criminals will find ways to make it not so.

Cardiologists from Tomsk Research Institute of Cardiology have been using 3D Printing Technology to create heart models for patients using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Now they have approached towards more complex, children’s hearts which can help surgeon pre-plan and pre-work forthcoming operations, knowing the defects and risks that can occur with real heart of children.

Victoria Sear, a graduate student from University of Michigan- Dearborn was introduced with 3D Printing Technology during an internship with SME and variety of things 3D Printing could offer. As a Bioengineering student, she was fascinated to learn about 3D Printed Prosthetics as replacement limbs, 3D Printed Heart models that were used to help prepare medical teams for surgical interventions, and a wide variety of medical devices that could be custom fabricated for patient-specific needs.

Duke University School of Medicine is making every possible use of 3D Printing they can in their medical efforts. From creating a 3D Printed Model of Hip at campus Co-Lab Studio through MRI and CT scans to aid in surgery for Chronic Limp in young woman; to enhancing Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement, a procedure for Aortic valve stenosis via a 3D Printed Model of flexible anatomy of aorta by Dr. Alice Wang at Duke University.

Researchers with Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York are working to develop 3D printed, personalized soft LAA occluding devices that are customized to a specific patient’s anatomy. The team used CT images of a person’s heart and a CAD program to isolate the surface of the LAA with a 0.5 mm thick shell, adding a valve for inflation and mechanical stabilization to the design. The molds for occluder are then printed for casting and filling.

Once a person suffers myocardial infarction or heart attack in local language, some part of heart is destroyed permanently at cellular level which cannot recover or regenerate. However, scientists have developed 3D printed cardiac patches that can be used to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks, but only about five have been produced worldwide. A group of researchers 3D printed a world-first stretchable microfiber scaffold with a hexagonal design to which added specialized stem cells called iPS-Cardiomyocytes, which began to contract unstimulated on the scaffold. The work has been demonstrated on the actual hearts of pigs and being planned for human trials.

ETH Zurich researchers are working on using 3D Printing Technology to create Magnets that can be used in Rotary Blood Pumps, which are the only option for patients suffering from end-stage heart failure. The traditionally available pumps tend to have the side effects of hemolysis and thrombus formation, therefore they created a filament made from thermoplastic combined with isotropic NdFeB powder, which was then used to 3D print a prototype of a turbodynamic pump with integrated magnets in the impeller and housing. The pump was 3D printed in one piece on a low-cost, consumer-level 3D printer (a Prusa i3 MK2 with a multi-material upgrade, to be exact), then the magnetic components were fully magnetized in a pulsed Bitter coil, added with MagFil, the 3D Printed Magnets, and whole process took 15 hours.

Atrial Fibrillation or irregular rapid heartbeats affect many people worldwide with major causing death, and surgeons use cardiac catheter devices to map a heart’s electrical activity, which can also be used to detect rhythm disturbances in a patient’s heartbeats and ultimately identifying which part of heart is affected. The one size of these cardiac catheter devices makes it hard to catch these irregular heartbeats due to missed signals and spotty connections. A team of researchers from Stanford University has developed customized 3D Printed Cardiac Catheter Devices that fit each individual’s heart by recording an image file of the heart during an MRI or CT scan.

To meet the requirements of a perfect stent like induction of rapid endothelialization to restore the functions of vascular tissue and compliance with medical requirements, particularly the flexibility required to facilitate placement, researchers approached 3D Printing these Stents with PLA and PCL composites. Using Tubular 3D Printer, they 3D Printed the stents which were then seeded with cells and left for three days, and then tests were performed to assess the morphological features, cell proliferation, cell adhesion, degradation rate and radial behavior. Both PCL and PLA showed themselves to be biocompatible, and the composite stents showed the most promise, with medium levels of degradation rates and mechanical modulus.

Kai von Petersdorff-Campen, a doctoral student in the mechanical and process engineering department at ETH Zurich, revealed his prototype of Magnet-Plastic Heart made through 3D Printing which took him 15 hears. The method, so called embedded magnet printing, involved 3D printing the magnets directly in the plasti and making processing them into filament strands, before they are 3D printed using FDM technology. The prototype of 3D printed heart pump was able to successfully pump 2.5 liters per minute with 1,000 rotations, but still needs to meet the required standards.

Allevi, a Bioprinter Company launched in 2014 has been famous for bioprinters such as Allevi One to Allevi 6, but they are also selling the Ink Kits usable with their printers, aiming at binding customers, getting revenue and building stronger relationship with their customers. After the FRESH Kit, they have launched Coaxial Extrusion Kit, which can create perfusable microchannels with hydrogels and cast endothelial microchannels, thus extending their use in all sorts of tissue types from Cartilage, Skeletal muscle, hearts and tumors.

UK researchers, I. Brewis and J.A. McLaughlin, at Northumbria University unveiled their new research that combines astrophysics with 3D Imaging and Printing in cardiovascular health care. Using the astrophysics in creating new image-processing techniques for viewing the human heart, transferring the data to an .stl file and then 3D printing a medical model, they finally produced a precise 3D model of a patient’s heart with Aortic Aneurysm using Netfabb and SLA 3D Printer.

Researchers from University of Sydney, including Kamarul Amin Abdullah, performed a three-tiered study that included: 3D printing a cardiac insert phantom created from volumetric CT image datasets, investigating the 3D printed phantom in evaluation an IR algorithm and evaluating optimal IR algorithm strengths for low-tube voltage CCTA protocols. They came up with the Lungman anthropomorphic chest phantom which is equipped with a phantom that mimics the heart, and the insert was created on a Creatbot DM Plus 3D printer. They also discovered that 3D printing was suitable for dose optimization studies, allowing for investigation of IR algorithm on dose reduction.

Researchers from China’s Zhejiang University used 3D Printing to study Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Connection (APVC), an uncommon congenital anomaly in which pulmonary venous blood flows directly into the right side of the heart or into the systemic veins. 3D printing of the personalized heart models was completed via an ISLA 650 3D printer (Shining 3D, China). Each patient-specific heart model took around half an hour to two hours to model, with 3D printing requiring anywhere from two to five hours. Surgeries were performed on all 17 patients, and each procedure was successful.