Open Book Pelvic Fracture
The chief physician of the orthopaedic department of a local hospital contacted us with a special case. A 39-year-old female patient, who had already had surgery for a pelvic ring fracture a while ago, had presented again with complaints and pain after a slip and fall. The patient was diagnosed with an instability in the pelvis caused by the new accident, which refractured a previous pelvic ring fracture.
In order to keep the patient's ability to give birth in the future, the physicians decided not to readjust the pelvis in the area of the symphysis. Instead, they chose to stabilize the pelvic ring in its current position by implanting an iliac crest bone graft. Therefore, a key requirement for the model was the option to use it for planning and training the harvesting and implantation of the bone graft.
The hospital provided the CT scan in Dicom format with a high resolution. The only downside was the artifacts caused by the already existing implant.
After segmenting the relevant anatomical structures from the CT scan, the model was 3D printed. As the model represents rigid bone structures and there are no special mechanical or medical requirements to the material, we used common FDM technology. The final model consists of five parts: left and right hip bone, Sacrum, a bolt and a nut. The total print time was about 16 hours for all parts plus 30 Minutes of post processing. The bone replicas were glued together using the embedded keys as alignment reference. Finaly, the nut and bolt replica were inserted and locked in places.
The final model gives a very good and precise overview of the special pathological situation of the patient and represents the case with a high level of detail. The total time spent to create the model was about 24 hours or two working days. After the model was delivered to the hospital, the physician was able to test and train the desired procedure together with his team.
Besides the main advantage of training the procedure before the patient goes into surgery, the model also works as a training tool for younger physicians after the intervention. The model can be reprinted multiple times and used for simulation and training or to find a better treatment for patients suffering from the same problem. If you would like to download the model, please follow the link below. This link will bring you to our 3D online platform where you can also download other case-related models.