Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jan;41(1):314-319.
doi: 10.1007/s00268-016-3814-5.

3D Printed Surgical Instruments: The Design and Fabrication Process

Mitchell George  1 , Kevin R Aroom  2 , Harvey G Hawes  2 , Brijesh S Gill  2 , Joseph Love  2
Affiliations

3D Printed Surgical Instruments: The Design and Fabrication Process

Mitchell George et al. World J Surg. 2017 Jan.

Abstract

Background: 3D printing is an additive manufacturing process allowing the creation of solid objects directly from a digital file. We believe recent advances in additive manufacturing may be applicable to surgical instrument design. This study investigates the feasibility, design and fabrication process of usable 3D printed surgical instruments.

Methods: The computer-aided design package SolidWorks (Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp., Waltham MA) was used to design a surgical set including hemostats, needle driver, scalpel handle, retractors and forceps. These designs were then printed on a selective laser sintering (SLS) Sinterstation HiQ (3D Systems, Rock Hill SC) using DuraForm EX plastic. The final printed products were evaluated by practicing general surgeons for ergonomic functionality and performance, this included simulated surgery and inguinal hernia repairs on human cadavers. Improvements were identified and addressed by adjusting design and build metrics.

Results: Repeated manufacturing processes and redesigns led to the creation of multiple functional and fully reproducible surgical sets utilizing the user feedback of surgeons. Iterative cycles including design, production and testing took an average of 3 days. Each surgical set was built using the SLS Sinterstation HiQ with an average build time of 6 h per set.

Conclusions: Functional 3D printed surgical instruments are feasible. Advantages compared to traditional manufacturing methods include no increase in cost for increased complexity, accelerated design to production times and surgeon specific modifications.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
An SLS machine.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Workflow diagram describing the iterative design cycle.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Scalpel handle, hemostats, needle drivers, forceps. Scale at bottom is in inches.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Digital rendering of the needle driver, exploded into its three parts.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Hull CW “Apparatus for production of three-dimensional objects by stereolithography.” U.S. Patent 4,575,330, March 11, 1986.
    1. Crump SS “Apparatus and method for creating three-dimensional objects.” U.S. Patent 5,121,329, June 9, 1992.
    1. Beaman JJ; Deckard CR “Selective laser sintering with assisted powder handling.” U.S. Patent 4,938,816, July 3, 1990.
    1. Berry Connell, Craven Brown. “Preliminary experience with medical applications of rapid prototyping by selective laser sintering” Med Eng Phys. 1997. January;19(1):90–6. - PubMed
    1. Rosset A, Spadola L, and Ratib O, “OsiriX: an open-source software for navigating in multidimensional DICOM images,” Journal of Digital Imaging, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 205–216, 2004. - PMC - PubMed