Desktop Health
Hannover Medical School’s (MHH) ENT clinic has used Desktop Health’s 3D-Bioplotter Manufacturer Series to produce a customised ear implant with drug release benefits.
The ear implant has been produced for implantation in an adult patient, with the ENT clinic being the first in the world to use the Desktop Health 3D-Bioplotter to customise an ear implant, print it with integrated pharmaceutical ingredients, and implant it.
Doctors at the ENT clinic were treating a patient who was suffering from recurrent narrowing of the auditory canal, which has been treated surgically several times without showing the desired improvements. The new implant serves a stent function, while also delivering ingredients designed to accelerate healing. It was designed by the Otolaryngology Clinic’s Inner Ear Pharmacology Department, which is renowned for the world’s largest cochlear implant programme for the care of hearing-impaired patients.
It has harnessed the Desktop Health 3D-Bioplotter, which was used to produce Dimension Inx’s CMFlex synthetic bone graft which has been cleared by the FDA, to advance its care for patients. ENT clinic director Prof. Prof. h.c. Thomas Lenarz, M.D. has suggested the clinic has ‘opened the door to a new type of pioneering patient care,’ while the CEO of Desktop Metal, the parent company of Desktop Health, suggests there is plenty more to come from users of the 3D-Bioplotter.
“Our entire team celebrates the important accomplishment by the Hannover Medical School ENT clinic has been years in the making,” commented Ric Fulop. “The benefits of 3D bioprinting are just beginning to move into actual patients and we celebrate this important shift in medicine that MHH and other medical innovators are driving forward. In recent months, we’ve seen the first products developed over many years on the 3D-Bioplotter moving into commercial and patient applications. We celebrate these important milestones, and what they mean for personalised patient care.”
