Canadian Manufacturing

3D printing takes centre stage in medical first

The process, also known as additive manufacturing, has been used for rapid prototyping in various industrial sectors for more than a decade

ANN ARBOR, Mich—In a medical first, doctors at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan used a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day.




Suddenly, a baby that doctors had said would probably not leave the hospital alive could breathe normally for the first time. He was three months old when the operation was done last year and is nearly 19 months old now. He is about to have his tracheotomy tube removed; it was placed when he was a couple months old and needed a breathing machine. And he has not had a single breathing crisis since the operation.


Kaiba had the operation on Feb. 9, 2012. The splint was placed around his defective bronchus, which was stitched to the splint to keep it from collapsing. The splint was manufactured a slit along its length so it can expand and grow as the child does&mdash;something a permanent, artificial implant could not do.

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