Man gets titanium skull (Video)

Surgeons at Xijing Hospital in Xi’an, Shaanxi province in Northwest China are using 3D-printing in a pioneering surgery to help rebuild the skull of a man who suffered brain damage in a construction accident.

The procedure left a depression in Hu’s head measuring 14cm x 9cm x 4cm. After he emerged from the coma he had impaired vision and had experienced damage to his language abilities.

Despite this, what prompted Hu to seek reconstruction surgery was the difficulty in finding a marriage partner for his son, who is in his early 20s. Matchmakers were unwilling to find a partner for his son because of Hu’s appearance, the paper said.

Guo Shuzhong, head of plastic surgery at Xijing Hospital, who oversaw the procedure, said the large indentation made the surgery highly complicated. There was a risk that brain tissue could be damaged during attempts to separate the scalp and the meninges, which are tightly connected, and Hu’s vision and eyeball movement could be affected by the eye socket reconstruction.

After intensive discussion, the doctors joined forces with the hospital’s orthopedics, neurosurgery and ophthalmology departments to carry out the procedure using 3D printing technology. The plan was to produce a 1:1 ratio titanium net modeled on the intact side of Hu’s face to reconstruct the left side.

The report said doctors may also need to take muscle tissue from the patient’s thigh to rebuild his face. The surgery was scheduled to take place on Aug. 28 and was expected to take five to ten hours. No further news about the surgery has been released as of press time.

Agencies/Canadajournal