The patient, Len Chandler, was 71 years old, had already survived prostate cancer, two knee replacements and had lost an eye. Then his doctor told him that he had a cancer-riddled heel and would probably have to lose his leg.
The doctor sent Chandler to see orthopedic surgeon Peter Choong, M.D. of St Vincent’s in Melbourne, Australia. As reported by Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s reporter Greg Hoy, Choong studied the ankle for a few minutes and then, while Chandler waited, got on the phone to a company called Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). “We might be able to put a titanium foot in, ” he said.
Choong explained: “We had to make something that was not too heavy. It sits in a very precarious position that unites a number of joints in the foot. We also had to make sure that it was designed in such a way that we could suture to it some ligaments that exist around the ankle and foot to give it the sort of stability it would need.”
Within a week CSIRO Additive Manufacturing delivered a titanium ankle to Choong who installed it in Chandler’s foot. It was the world-first operation in which a 3-D printer was used to save a man’s cancer-riddled heel.
When Hoy broadcast his story it had been 14 week since the surgery. He reported that Chandler was walking around and both he and Choong were delighted with the results. Choong notes, “Three D printing offers an amazing future for medicine. We have always been frustrated at getting something small enough, fine enough, using what has been a manufacturing process that has remained fairly stable for perhaps the last century or so.”
Choong is getting his wish. Across town from St Vincent’s, at the RMIT MicroNano Research Facility, scientists are using another revolutionary type of 3-D printer to build objects so tiny that they are invisible to the human eye.
