Jaw implant produced with Lithoz ceramic 3D printing technology successfully implanted for first time
A ceramic subperiosteal jaw implant produced with 3D printing expertise from Lithoz has been efficiently positioned in a affected person for the primary time ever.
This medical breakthrough occurred in Austria and is a part of the EU-funded INKplant undertaking, which goals to create 3D printed patient-specific implants to deal with varied pathologies affecting the aged. It’s being led by Profactor GmbH and is made up of 19 interdisciplinary companions.
Lithoz, a kind of 19 companions, has been researching the optimum fusion of assorted biomaterials with some great benefits of 3D printing since 2021. The subperiosteal jaw implant was developed with and constructed by Lithoz to handle the difficulty of atrophic jaws, a typical downside in older sufferers. After the lack of tooth, the jawbone disappears as nicely, leading to atrophic jaws and rendering using dentures unattainable. With extreme atrophy, standard dental implants require extra prolonged operations to graft new bone to anchor the implants. Such operations are mentioned to be tough for aged sufferers who can not bear bone grafting as a consequence of well being points.
A affected person at Kepler College Hospital, who had misplaced a number of dental implants and bone grafts previously as a consequence of his compromised well being, was unable to obtain additional standard surgical methods because of vital scarring and thus obtained the brand new implant as a compassionate use case. Manufactured from biocompatible high-strength zirconia utilizing Lithoz LCM expertise, the implant didn’t require any bone augmentation and required just one process, lowering therapeutic time by an estimated 75% and avoiding extra trauma for the affected person. Because of this synergetic innovation in design and materials, all the mandatory surgical procedures had been accomplished in a single operation.
The surgical procedure, led by DDr. Christoph Staudigl, was a profitable world first use of a ceramic subperiosteal jaw implant in a compassionate use case on a affected person. Regardless of some anticipated wound therapeutic points after surgical procedure, the superior delicate tissue compatibility of zirconia in comparison with titanium performed its function ‘spectacularly’, based on the undertaking companions. The implant has proven medical stability after 60 days, representing a decisive breakthrough for the remedy of severely atrophic jaws.
The design of the personalized implant was pioneered by the Centre for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering on the Medical College of Vienna in collaboration with DDr. Staudigl. Through the design course of, BTI Biotechnology Institute (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain) and BioMed Centre Innovation GmbH (Bayreuth, Germany) additionally contributed considerably with their experience. The implant might be patented and adopted as a medical system by BioMed Centre spin-off Agensmed GmbH and might be manufactured utilizing Lithoz 3D printers. A medical trial is being ready to systematically validate its efficacy.