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 numerous 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 varied biomaterials with the 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 standard drawback in older sufferers. After the lack of tooth, the jawbone disappears as nicely, leading to atrophic jaws and rendering the usage of dentures unimaginable. With extreme atrophy, standard dental implants require further prolonged operations to graft new bone to anchor the implants. Such operations are stated to be tough for aged sufferers who can not endure bone grafting resulting from well being points.
A affected person at Kepler College Hospital, who had misplaced a number of dental implants and bone grafts previously resulting from his compromised well being, was unable to obtain additional standard surgical methods because of important scarring and thus acquired the brand new implant as a compassionate use case. Made 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. Due to this synergetic innovation in design and materials, all the required 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 smooth tissue compatibility of zirconia in comparison with titanium performed its function ‘spectacularly’, in accordance with the undertaking companions. The implant has proven medical stability after 60 days, representing a decisive breakthrough for the therapy 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 can be patented and adopted as a medical system by BioMed Centre spin-off Agensmed GmbH and can be manufactured utilizing Lithoz 3D printers. A medical trial is being ready to systematically validate its efficacy.
