Lisa Lattanza, MD, performed Yale School of Medicine's first fully in-house 3D surgical case, according to a May 28 announcement.
The custom, personalized 3D procedure repaired a distal radius malunion. Dr. Lattanza and a team at Yale developed a surgical plan with 3D-printed surgical guides and anatomical models. She also used the model to examine, manipulate and refer to during the April surgery.
The 3D-printed models were developed at Yale's 3D Collaborative for Medical Innovation, which is based in the orthopedic and rehabilitation department.
"Because the 3DC is within Yale School of Medicine, we are adjacent to the physicians and the operating rooms," 3DC Program Director and Lead Engineer Alyssa Glennon, said in the feature. "We can make rapid changes based on real-time feedback from the clinicians, and we can work with faster lead times since no shipment is required. We can also support more pathology types and patient age brackets, circumventing any limitations of third parties. We can have engineering staff present in the operating room at the time of surgery, or we are just a short walk away."