38-year-old man gets 3D-printed hip transplant at city hospital

Based on the accident victim's CT scan images, 3-dimensional bone model of his pelvis was created

Satyajit Mondal, a 38-year-old graduate from West Bengal, was suffering from right hip pain over past two years. He had sustained a fracture dislocation of his right hip bone in a road accident two years ago. As it was initially left untreated, this left him with a short, painful and immobile hip. He consulted Dr Sunil G Kini, Senior Consultant Joint Replacement and Arthroscopy Surgeon at Manipal Hospitals, Bengaluru

On examination, his right leg was an inch and half short with painful and restricted hip movements. Radiographs and CT scan of his hip showed that the ba ll of the thigh bone had split the socket bone, resulting in severe bone loss and a malrotated pelvis. “The most important step here was to plan well before the actual surgery. Since the anatomy of the whole pelvis and hip was now grossly distorted it would be a good idea to know exactly how his hip looks in comparison to a normal hip. The patient was recommended the latest technology of 3D printing to pre-plan his case better,” said Dr Kini.

The most important step was to plan well before the surgery. The patient was recommended the 3D printing technology to pre-plan his case

— Dr Sunil G Kini, Surgeon

This involves recreating a 3-dimensional bone model of the patient’s pelvis based on his CT scan images. The whole process takes about a couple of days to complete. This model is used to plan the surgery in terms of how we would like to position the implants and to identify the landmarks on the model that the surgeon would look for when he is in the operating theatre. In this case, the model also showed that hardly one fourth of his original socket was intact and this would require a complex reconstruction procedure. We could execute all that we planned before and that also reduced our operating time said Dr Kini.

The patient is recuperating well post-surgery and undergoing an extensive rehab programme.3D printing can be used to create patient specific organ replicas. This would aid the surgeons to plan and practice on, before performing these complicated operations said Dr Kini.

In India, knee replacements are more common as there is more pressure on the knees due to difference in activity levels as compared to the westerners.
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