IK4-Lortek presents its advances in research in maxillofacial surgery

The technological research Centre IK4-LORTEK has worked on a project called FUSBIO during 2011 and 2012. The centre has designed and manufactured some new fixing plates to be used in maxillofacial surgery. The technology used to produce these plates has been the additive laser manufacturing. The results have recently been presented in the 9th conference of Material processing by Laser Technology, in Vigo, Spain and will be shown worldwide in the next International Conference RAPID 2013 in Pensilvannia, USA.

Additive manufacturing increasingly on request

The maxillofacial surgery is a dental specialty which consists in treating hard and soft tissues problems in mouth and face. Because of its complexity there is a huge variety of procedures to be fulfilled and customized products request is increasing day-to-day. Additive manufacturing technologies have proven to be very useful for manufacturing of custom made parts.

Mandibular reconstruction

The research has focused on the reconstructive surgery applications, specifically in the manufacturing of components that will help in mandibular rehabilitation, resection and reconstruction. The technique used nowadays for the mandibular reconstruction consists in removing a free vascularized bone graft from the patient´s fibula and using some fixing plates which commercially are designed in different sizes. They must be adjusted manually to the patient anatomy by the surgeon during the surgery. This means that the success of this surgery depends on the surgeon´s ability and experience. This technique is also very expensive.

IK4-LORTEK has advanced considerably in this field designing and producing a new fixing plate which is adapted to the patient anatomy thanks to additive manufacturing technology (Selective Laser Melting) and researchers´ wide knowledge and expertise in components design and manufacturing. To produce the fixing plate they have started with a 3D medical image of the patient´s head (tomography), have treated it on different programs to get the 3D image of the jaw, and from it, have designed and manufactured the new customized fixing plates.

The use of these new fixing plates in mandibular reconstruction surgery will reduce the operation time and will avoid the difficult and time consuming adjustments that the surgeon had to make until now.