SALZBURG UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL PERFORMS GROUNDBREAKING SURGERY USING 3D SYSTEMS’ MOST ADVANCED ORTHOPEDIC TECHNOLOGIES

3D Systems recently announced that the University Hospital of Salzburg (Austria) has successfully applied the company’s unique portfolio of point-of-care additive manufacturing technologies to design and produce its first 3D-printed PEEK cranial implant as a custom device for an individual patient need. These technologies were brought together by the hospital’s in-house clinicians to successfully address the patient’s needs, providing a customized solution that best positioned the team for success.

The hospital used Oqton’s D2P^® software to create 3D models from the patient's CT images and Oqton’s Geomagic Freeform^® to complete the design of the patient-specific occipital prosthesis. The cranial implant was printed using VESTAKEEP^® i4 3DF PEEK by Evonik on 3D Systems’ Kumovis R1 extrusion platform. PEEK is a very desirable material for the production of medical devices because it is lightweight, resistant to thermal and ionizing radiation, and possesses mechanical properties similar to those of human bone. The Kumovis printing platform was specifically designed to enable this type of point-of-care application within the hospital.

The adoption of 3D-printed cranial implants is expected to accelerate significantly based on technological advancements. According to a report released by Acumen Research and Consulting in February 2023, the cranial implants market size in 2021 was roughly $1.2 billion and is anticipated to approach $2.1 billion by 2030. Cranial implants can address a breadth of applications including trauma, defects, and reconstruction. Advances in technology — including materials and manufacturing methodologies such as 3D printing — are anticipated to provide new solutions to help drive growth in this market.

As a pioneer in personalized healthcare solutions, 3D Systems has worked with surgeons for over a decade to plan more than 150,000 patient-specific cases, and additively manufacture more than two million implants and instruments for 100+ CE-marked and FDA-cleared devices from its world-class, FDA-registered, ISO 13485-certified facilities in Littleton, Colorado, and Leuven, Belgium. For more detail on the procedure performed by the University Hospital Salzburg (Austria) team, the translation of the hospital’s press release is below. The full German press release is available here.