Man makes surgical history after having his shattered face rebuilt using 3D printed parts

           Surgeons used scanned 3D images of Stephen Power's                  face to design guides to cut and position bones, as well as              print titanium implants

Stephen Power photographed before the operation, left, and following the procedure 

By Keith Perry

The survivor of a serious motorbike crash has made surgical history after his entire face was rebuilt using 3D printed parts.

Stephen Power is thought to be one of the first trauma patients in the world to have 3D printing technology used at every stage of the medical procedure to restore his looks.

Doctors at Morriston Hospital, Swansea, had to break his cheekbones again before rebuilding his face in an eight-hour operation.

Despite wearing a crash helmet Mr Power, 29, suffered multiple trauma injuries in the accident in 2012, which left him in hospital for four months.

“I can't remember the accident - I remember five minutes before and then waking up in the hospital a few months later. I broke both cheek bones, top jaw, my nose and fractured my skull," he said.

Consultant maxillofacial surgeon Adrian Sugar said: “We were able to do a pretty good job with all his facial injuries, with the exception of his left cheek and eye socket.

“We fixed his facial fractures pretty well but he had damaged his left eye and the ophthalmologists did not want us to do anything that might damage his sight further.

“That was a good move because his eyesight has mostly recovered. But as a result we did not get his left cheekbone in the right place and we did not even try to reconstruct the very thin bones around his eye socket.

“So the result was that his cheekbone was too far out and his eye was sunk in and dropped.”

Last year, surgeons started planning the surgery to restore the symmetry to Mr Power’s face.

The project was the work of the Centre for Applied Reconstructive Technologies in Surgery, a partnership between Morriston Hospital’s Maxillofacial Unit and the National Centre for Product Design and Development Research (PDR) at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

The team used scanned 3D images of Mr Power’s face to design guides to cut and position the bones, as well as plates to hold the bones in place. All the models – along with the finished guides and medical-grade titanium implants – were produced by 3D printing.

Mr Sugar said: “Stephen had a very complex injury and correcting it involved bones having to be re-cut into several fragments.

“Being able to do that and to put them back in the right position was a complex three dimensional exercise. It made sense to plan it in three dimensions and that is why 3D printing came in – and successive 3D printing, as at every different stage we had a model.

An x-ray of Stephen Power's skull

Mr Power, from Cardiff, still has a long way to go with his overall physical recovery. But the success of his facial reconstruction has huge implications for others.

Looking at the results of the surgery, Mr Power says he feels transformed - with his face now much closer in shape to how it was before the accident.

"It is life changing," he said.

"I could see the difference straight away the day I woke up from the surgery."

Having used a hat and glasses to mask his injuries before the operation, Mr Power has said he already feels more confident.

"I'm hoping I won't have to disguise myself - I won't have to hide away," he said.

 

(Lt-Rt) A 3D mould of Stephen's face was made before the titanium imaplants were created

(Lt-Rt) A 3D mould of Stephen's face was made before the titanium imaplants were created

"I'll be able to do day-to-day things, go and see people, walk in the street, even go to any public areas."

Mr Sugar described it as an evolution of 3D technology, taking what had been done before not just one step but two or three steps further.

“Previous efforts elsewhere to take it to this step have failed and so we have had to learn from those experiences.

“This is really the first time we’ve taken it to this stage, where everything to the very last screws being inserted has been planned and modelled in advance – and worked sweetly.”

Mr Sugar said the same techniques would be used to help many other patients in future.

Design engineer Sean Peel said the latest advance should encourage greater use of 3D printing within the NHS.

"It tends to be used for individual really complicated cases as it stands - in quite a convoluted, long-winded design process," he said.

"The next victory will be to get this process and technique used more widely as the costs fall and as the design tools improve."

Mr Power's operation is currently being featured in an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, called 3D Printing: The Future.

Source: telegraph.co.uk