3D Printed Heart Model Helps Surgeons Save Baby’s Life

Many fellow fans of 3D Printing will have already read about the 14-month-old boy, Roland Lian Cung Bawi, whose life was recently saved at Kosair Children’s Hospital with the help of 3D Printing.

Roland, the son of Burmese immigrants living in Owensboro, Kentucky, was born with heart defects that included a hole in his heart and misaligned aorta and pulmonary artery. These defects made pumping blood difficult and led to Roland having trouble sleeping and eating, as well as making him weak and causing difficulties breathing. Dr. Erle Austin, an experienced heart surgeon at Kosair Children’s Hospital, knew that Roland’s complex condition would be particularly difficult to treat. He showed two-dimensional scans to other surgeons and got conflicting advice on how to proceed with treatment.  So he decided to turn to 3D Printing to give him a better look at what he was dealing with. Using the child’s medical image data, Dr. Philip Dydynski, Chief of Pediatric Radiology at the hospital, created a virtual model of the child’s heart by working together with Materialise and the Mimics Innovation Suite – the result of which could then be 3D printed at the University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering and used by Dr. Austin to better prepare for the operation.

We urge you to watch the video below to find out more details about the operation itself as well as the outcome [Spoiler: it is a happy ending!]. It is a fantastic story which really highlights the impact that 3D Printing can have on the lives of individuals with complex medical conditions and the doctors who treat them, and we are proud to have been involved in making this case possible through our software.