Dr. Sawyer, a spine surgeon with Campbell Clinic, recently used a 3D printing surgical technique to treat a 14-year-old patient with spinal muscular atrophy.
A model of the patient’s spine is created, which surgeons use to calculate where the screws need to be placed to straighten the spine.
“You put this on your desk, you look at it every day for a week, and by the time you get to surgery, you’ve already seen it seven times,” Dr. Sawyer told WMC5 in a Nov. 12 interview. “These models are life-size and so when we get into surgery, we see exactly what we’ve seen before.”
Campbell Clinic and Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis are the first two facilities to use the novel approach in the Mid-South, according to Dr. Sawyer.
More articles on spine:
The most controversial trends in spine from 10 surgeons
6 Texas orthopedic practices to merge into 150-plus physician group
We’re going to need a bigger scalpel — Mississippi spine surgeon operates on sand tiger shark’s spine
