This technology can help children with so-called microphthalmia and aphasia, whose eyes are underdeveloped or missing at birth. According to previous studies, this situation may occur in one or two eyes, affecting more than 10% of blind children in the world, as many as 30/65438+ 10,000 children.
Although the carved eyes can't be seen by children, they do provide key support for the eye sockets and make the children's faces natural. Today (May 1 1 day), researchers said at the annual meeting of the Vision and Ophthalmology Research Association (ARVO), the world's largest gathering place for ophthalmology and vision researchers, that in proportion,
"If you don't have eyes, there isn't enough * * * for bones to grow," said Maayke Kuijten, a postdoctoral researcher at VU University Medical Center, who studied five qualified children in ARVO. Kuijten said, [10 The strangest thing created by 3D printing]
Because children with these diseases may have deformed eye sockets, the area around the face and eyes cannot expand to the natural contour. She said that the advantage of 3D printed goggles is that as children grow up, parents can change a slightly larger size at home or change it once a week when their children are several months old. Kuijten told Life Science:
"Facial symmetry is our ultimate goal." If a child or an adult loses an eye, a device called an artificial eye should be installed. This is usually called "glass eye" because it was originally made of glass, but now most of it is made of medical-grade plastic acrylic. These artificial eyes are made by ophthalmologists who have received professional training in making and installing artificial eyes.
Artificial eyes can be approximately spherical, like eyeballs, or cup-shaped to adapt to existing, deformed and nonfunctional eyes. Kuijten said that submissives are usually used for temporary support, such as maintaining the eye socket for several months after accidentally losing an eye until a more permanent artificial eye socket can be installed.
However, making and installing artificial eye sockets is a hard process, even for a conformist. Ophthalmologists usually have to visually observe the size of the eye socket, make a sphere according to informed guesses, and polish it to a perfect fit. This is not only medical care, but also a work of art.
For babies with microphthalmia or aphasia, time is of the essence, because their fast-growing heads need a full-size eyeball, and the eye socket frame can be enlarged accordingly. Kuijten said that if there were no such * * *, that part of the skull would be sunken inward.
3D printing conformal device is helpful to solve this problem, because it can print quickly and cheaply, and can print various sizes with diameters less than1mm..
You can test the effectiveness of the 3D printing shaper. Kuijten's team observed the patients treated by Dr. Dyonne Hartong, an ophthalmic plastic surgeon at VU University Medical Center. He is currently treating about 50 patients with small eyes or no eyes. Hatton is a senior researcher in this research.
This is part of the standard care for children with these eye diseases in the Netherlands. When they were three months old, they had several ultrasonic examinations of their heads, and then they had magnetic resonance scans when they were three months old. Magnetic resonance imaging needs anesthesia because the baby can't be instructed not to move during the scanning. But for newborns under 3 months, peri-anesthesia is considered too dangerous. )
Using these scanning data, the researchers determined the degree of eye deformity and the size of eye socket. Doctors also injected a soft gel into the affected eye socket to form a rough model of its shape.
According to these measured values and the data of natural growth and development, Kuidan designed the eye development chart for these children in the future 10. Then, her team used a 3D printer to create a custom constructor in a huge array, which matched the growth chart prediction. [7 cool usages of 3D printing in medicine]
People who stick to the rules don't look like eyes. In fact, the original batch of eyes are green and have no pupil coloring. But after they have been trained by ophthalmologists, it is convenient enough for their parents. Kuijten said that this treatment is non-invasive and painless for children.
The researchers said that early evaluation showed that the average orbital volume of the treated eyes doubled in about one year of treatment, which indicated that the orbit was obviously dilated. Research on these children is under way.
"This is undoubtedly a new method with many advantages," said Dr Irene Gottlob, professor of ophthalmology at Leicester Royal Hospital, University of Leicester, who was not involved in the study. This is a good example of individualized treatment, or "precision medicine". This is also a good example to illustrate the application of 3D printing technology in medicine.
However, so far, only five patients have received treatment, and we need to see the results of a larger group, "Gottlob added.
Gottlob said that she was encouraged by the researchers and planned to improve the mathematical model to better predict the growth and development of the eye socket. She also pointed out that better ultrasound scanning will help bring this method to babies before they reach the age when they can safely undergo MRI scanning.
"I think this is very promising ... Gottlob told Life Science, but the experience and further development of more patients will further improve this.
Follow Christopher Wanjek@Wanjek and get daily tweets about health and science in a humorous way. Jack Wan is the author of Food at Work and Bad Medicine. His column "Bad Medicine" appears regularly in Life Science.