Surgery is hard, there is a reason why school is so long for the profession. Making the job easier and smoother for both patients and surgeons is valuable for all parties, which is why [Mayo Clinic] is now working on including 3D printing into its more regular medicine pipeline.

Prepping for surgery often requires examining CT scans of patients to figure out, well, what they’re even going to be doing. Every body is different, and complex surgical procedures require checking to see where certain organs or features are located. This can be made much easier with a physical model of where the bones, organs, or nerves are specifically located in a patient. While this isn’t true in every case of treatment, there are even cancerous cases where custom equipment can be used to decrease side effects, such as mini-beam collimator adapters.

What if you could use the same pipeline to print what was lost from certain procedures? In a mastectomy, the breast tissue is removed, which can cause negative attention from curious gazes. So why not 3D print a custom breast? Cases like these are generally considered poor commercial investments from industry, but are relatively easy for an existing medical facility to add to treatment.

[Mayo Clinic] is far from the first to consider 3D printing in the medical setting, but seeing the technology see actual applied use rather than future seeking is exciting. Medical hacking is always exciting, and if you want to see more examples, keep sure to check out this commercially available simulator (with some free models).