Fab lab Barcelona prints aortas in 3D for Badalona's Hospital surgery practices

by Marco Sanalitro     Posted on August 02, 2017

Badalona’s Hospital Germans Trias i Pujols performs a series of complex aortic aneurysms surgical interventions successfully thanks to prior medical rehearsals with 3D printed prototypes fabricated at the Fab Lab Barcelona.

The collaboration with Fab Lab Barcelona, which began last November, has allowed the team of Dr. Pere Mas Altés, Vascular Surgeon of the Hospital, to carry out 6 successful operations to date thanks to the surgical practice with abdominal aortas printed in Fab Lab Barcelona, the first digital manufacturing laboratory in the European Union. With these 3D models printed, doctors were able to study the shape of the aneurysm in order to perform the surgery in the briefest and most efficient way.

An aneurysm is an inflammation of the artery that weakens its structure with risk of rupture. Through 3D printing, a real-scale reproduction system of the inflamed area where the surgeons will intervene is achieved. Fab Lab Barcelona project leaders Miguel Guerrero and Tomás Martín have been responsibles of using the patient’s TACS to convert the 3D models into data suitable for printing so that they can be transformed into objects.