Chinese can make spinal bones & break spinal bones. Hearty congrats to our colleague. Surgeons in China have successfully implanted an artificial 3D-printed vertebra into a 12-year-old bone cancer patient to help him walk again. Doctors at a University Hospital in Beijing first removed a tumour located in the second vertebra of the boy's neck before replacing it with the 3D-printed implant between the first and third vertebrae to allow him to lift his head.
The five-hour surgery was a world first and will enable the boy to walk again after spending two months confined to a hospital bed. 'This is the first use of a 3D-printed vertebra as an implant for orthopedic spine surgery in the world,' said the doctor who performed the surgery. Before the surgery, the boy had been lying flat in the orthopedics ward - he could only occasionally stand up but just for a few minutes at a time. The…
