3D Printing Trade Association Discusses Seven 3D Printing Healthcare Applications

The medical uses are extremely practical and overtime could really solve ongoing health issues once it’s figured out how to accurately apply them to people.

7 3D Printing Medical Applications:

• Embryonic Stem Cells: These cells have already been successfully printed in a lab and could be one-day use to create tissue that could help test drugs and assist in the growth of new organs.
• Printing Skin: There have been many advances in the areas of developing skin to help burn victims and skin disease patients, 3D printers can help further jumpstart these advances with the addition of laser-printed skin cells.
• Blood Vessels & Heart Tissue: Organovo is a company that has already successfully printed blood vessels and sheets of cardiac tissue that actually beat along just like a real heart.
• Replacing Cartilage & Bone: 3D printers have also helped scientists and doctors create stem cells that could eventually develop into both bone and cartilage in the long-term.
• Studying Cancer: Printing cancer cells is a way of growing these cells on tissue in a lab to study, test drugs on and to eventually find a cure for.
• Patching a Broken Heart: Printing cells with a 3D printer proves useful in a recent study of rats that had previously suffered heart attacks and were given these patches of cells to help slowly help improve their heart function overtime.
• Replacement Organs: 3D bioprinting new parts for organs or entire organs all together will help solve an ongoing medical need and help save hundred of thousands of people every year waiting for an organ donation to come thru.