3D Printing PEEK: A New Direction for Skull Restoration
The 3D printed PEEK skull plate can highly restore the physiological structure of the skull, so that the skull plate fits perfectly with the patient's skull.
3D Printing PEEK: A New Direction for Skull Restoration
The skull, as the outer protective fortress of the brain, is of great significance to the human body. It is not only like a hard shield, protecting the brain, the core organ of the human body, from direct damage from the outside world; It also plays a key role in maintaining stable intracranial pressure, ensuring normal blood circulation in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid circulation, and creating a stable environment for the normal functioning of the brain. There are always accidents and illnesses in life that can break this protection and lead to skull defects. Common causes include serious traffic accidents, production safety accidents, head injuries caused by falling objects or falls, and patients often need to undergo decompression surgery; In addition, due to cerebral hemorrhage, skull lesions, intracranial tumors and other cranial diseases, the number of patients with skull defects due to various reasons is increasing every year.
Hazards of skull defects
The harm caused by skull defects to patients is multifaceted. Physiologically, skull defects destroy the integrity and closure of the skull, resulting in impaired cerebral blood circulation and cerebrospinal fluid circulation, which in turn affects cranial nerve function. Patients usually experience symptoms such as headache and dizziness, which seriously affect daily life. Some elderly patients have more severe symptoms and may even fall due to dizziness, which is life-threatening. In addition, a large area of skull defect may also lead to limb weakness, numbness and other problems, affecting the patient's mobility. At the same time, due to the loss of skull protection in the head defect area, the brain tissue is very vulnerable to injury when subjected to external force, causing serious consequences such as intracranial hematoma and brain tissue swelling, and even threatening the patient's life. Moreover, repeated stimulation of the defective area may induce epilepsy, causing great distress to the patient.
Psychologically, a skull defect can also be a heavy blow to the patient. The obvious deformity of the head will cause patients to have negative emotions such as low self-esteem and self-isolation, and they are reluctant to go out and communicate with others, which seriously affects the mental health and social life of patients. Skull defects have a serious impact on the physical and mental health and quality of life of patients, therefore, skull repair is urgent, and finding a safe and effective repair method has become an important issue in the medical field.
Development of cranial repair materials
In the early days, due to the limitations of medical technology and the level of development of material science, people could only use some relatively simple materials to try to repair skull defects. With the passage of time and the advancement of science and technology, more and more new skull repair materials are emerging, and the emergence of each material represents an important breakthrough in the medical field in this direction.
Titanium mesh
Among the traditional cranial repair materials, titanium mesh is one of the more commonly used. Titanium mesh has a certain strength and stability, and is widely used in skull repair surgery, which can restore the shape of the skull and protect brain tissue to a certain extent. However, it also has a number of problems. From the perspective of biocompatibility, titanium mesh is a metal material after all, and its affinity with human tissues is limited, and some patients may have a rejection reaction to it, resulting in postoperative discomfort. Moreover, the thermal conductivity of the titanium mesh is high, and the thermal insulation performance is not good, which makes the patient more sensitive to cold and hot stimuli in daily life. When it is cold in winter, it will feel extremely cold, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients. In addition, because the titanium mesh is made of metal, it will produce obvious artifacts during medical imaging examinations such as CT and MRI, which will interfere with the doctor's accurate judgment of the intracranial situation, which may lead to misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis, and affect the subsequent treatment plan.
plexiglass
Plexiglass has also been used in skull repair. It has the characteristics of relatively low price and convenient processing and shaping, and doctors can shape it according to the shape of the patient's skull defect. However, the shortcomings of plexiglass are also very prominent, its texture is brittle, the impact resistance is poor, when hit by external forces, it is very easy to rupture, not only can not continue to play a role in protecting brain tissue, broken plexiglass fragments may also puncture the surrounding brain tissue, causing serious consequences. Moreover, plexiglass is prone to subcutaneous fluid accumulation after surgery, which increases the risk of infection and further affects the patient's recovery.
bone cement
Bone cement is also a traditional skull repair material. It is relatively simple to operate, and can be quickly filled and shaped according to the shape of the skull defect during surgery at a low cost. The biocompatibility of bone cement is poor, and the combination with human tissues is not close enough, and long-term use may cause problems such as wear and tear, loosening, etc., resulting in poor repair effect. In addition, bone cement releases heat during the curing process, which may cause thermal damage to the surrounding brain tissue and nerves, affecting the recovery of nerve function.
These traditional cranial repair materials have varying degrees of problems in terms of biocompatibility, stability, imaging interference, and impact on patients' quality of life, which cannot fully meet the needs of cranial repair surgery and patients' expectations for a healthy life. Therefore, finding a more ideal skull repair material has become an important issue to be solved in the medical field.
PEEK skull repair plate
In the exploration of cranial repair materials, the emergence of polyetheretherketone (PEEK) materials has brought new hope to the field of cranial repair. With its excellent performance, it has gradually become an ideal choice for cranial repair, and the integration of 3D printing technology has made PEEK material play a huge advantage in cranial repair, opening a new chapter in cranial repair.
Advantages of PEEK material
PEEK material From the perspective of biocompatibility, PEEK material has a good affinity with human tissue. It will not trigger the body's immune rejection like some traditional materials, and can live in harmony with the surrounding tissues, providing a good foundation for the repair of the skull, reducing the risk of postoperative infection and inflammation, and helping patients recover after surgery.
In terms of strength, PEEK material performs excellently, with high strength and stiffness. It can effectively resist the impact of the outside world, like a strong shield, providing reliable protection for brain tissue, reducing the damage of external forces to the brain, and making patients feel more at ease in their daily life.
Ray transmissibility is also a highlight of PEEK materials. This feature allows patients to undergo CT, MRI and other medical imaging examinations after surgery without interference from materials, and doctors can clearly and accurately observe the intracranial situation, detect and deal with possible problems in time, and provide strong support for subsequent treatment.
In addition, PEEK material has good thermal insulation properties. It can effectively block the conduction of external temperature, avoid the discomfort caused by temperature changes in daily life, whether it is a hot summer or a cold winter, it can make patients feel comfortable, and significantly improve the quality of life of patients.
3D printing technology
3D printing technology, as an emerging manufacturing technology, has played a key role in the use of PEEK materials in the process of cranial restoration. It can be customized according to the specific situation of the patient's skull defect, and create a unique skull repair plan for each patient.
Before surgery, doctors perform high-precision CT scans to obtain detailed data about the location of the skull defect. The data will be transferred to a computer, and a 3D model of the patient's skull defect will be constructed using professional 3D modeling software. The PEEK material is then stacked layer by layer using 3D printing technology to create a restoration that precisely matches the patient's skull defect. This personalized method can highly restore the physiological structure of the skull, so that the restoration fits perfectly with the patient's skull, which not only improves the success rate of the operation, but also makes the patient's postoperative appearance more natural and beautiful.
For example, for some patients with irregular skull defects due to special reasons, it is difficult to accurately match traditional restoration materials, while 3D printed PEEK restorations can be tailored to the specific situation of the patient to achieve precise repair. In addition, 3D printing technology can also design some special structures on the restoration, such as the connection with the skull edge, to make it more stable, further improving the effectiveness and safety of the operation.
The excellent results of 3D printed PEEK materials in the field of cranial repair have been fully verified in many clinical cases. Every successful case is not only a triumph of medical technology, but also a testimony of patients regaining hope for health and life.
Although there are still some challenges in the field of skull repair with 3D printed PEEK materials, such as high cost, technical standardization and standardization need to be improved, we have reason to believe that with the continuous progress and innovation of science and technology, these problems will be gradually solved. In the future, 3D printed PEEK materials are expected to be more widely used in the field of skull repair, bringing health and hope to more patients with skull defects.