/ News
3D printing saving lives in the operating room
For 18-month-old Garrett Peterson, every breath is a struggle.
He was born with a condition known as tracheomalacia, a disease that deforms the muscles around the trachea and makes it difficult to breathe.
Garrett breathes with the help of a ventilator and even the slightest movement can cut-off air to his lungs in a matter of seconds.
“When nurses would just move his head from side to side, he would just turn blue like instantly,” explains Garrett’s mother Natalie Peterson.
While some forms of tracheomalacia can be cured with the help of physiotherapy or surgery, doctors at the University of Michigan are turning to an emerging technology for a potential cure: 3D printing.
Everything from car parts and toys to fashion accessories and guns are now being made with 3D printers, but doctors believe its biggest potential may be in the field of medicine.
Dr. Scott Hollister, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, has teamed up with heart surgeons to design a splint using a 3D printer that would support Garrett’s trachea until it grows strong enough to function on its own.
“It takes about three years for the material to degrade. By that time the trachea itself will grow and remodel into a trachea that has a normal architecture,” Hollister told CTV News.
The splint is built using a preliminary 3D digital design which is then sliced into layers that are printed one at a time until the final product takes shape.
While Garrett is only the second patient in the world to have the procedure done, doctors have been using 3D printing to help reconstruct bones, organs, arteries and more with varying degrees of success for the past 10 years.
At Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital, engineers are creating 3D replicas of patients’ hearts to help doctors plan their surgeries.
“Instead of having to do that in my mind, I can take this model, which does it in a printed form and look at it, and say ‘I know exactly what it is and I know exactly what I’m going to do in the operating room’,” Dr. Glen Van Arsdell told CTV News.
The replicas are based on 2D CAT scans or MRIs, and can be built using plastics, metals or acrylics.
“We’re so excited about being able to do this and be able to help patients with this new technology,” said Dr. Eric Horlick from Toronto General Hospital.
In fact, layer by layer, doctors are recreating replacement parts for much of the human body including ears, noses, bladders and bones.
• In 2013, surgeons in the U.K. were able to recreate a man’s face with models, plates and screws produced by 3D printers.
• Earlier this year, researchers in Harvard used a specially-designed 3D printer to create a patch of artificial tissue interlaced with skin cells and blood vessels.
• In March, San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo Holdings Inc. announced that it was using 3D printing to create tissue that may one day look and function like a human liver. The company says the new technology could soon provide drug makers with realistic replicas of human tissue for drug testing and may eventually recreate human organs for the purpose of transplants and surgeries.
Doctors say the revolutionary technology could help improve their accuracy and speed up surgery times, saving the lives of countless patients like Garrett all by pressing “print.”
With a report by CTV Medical Specialist Avis Favaro and Producer Elizabeth St. Philip
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/3d-printing-saving-lives-in-the-operating-room-1.1741857
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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