3D printed implants for facial injuries to be made in Wales

Peter Llewelyn Evans with a 3D printed implant for a fractured eye socket

Titanium implants used to rebuild people's faces after injury and disease can now be made in Wales.

Experts at Swansea's Morriston Hospital have helped to create new 3D software which allows surgeons to quickly design and print bespoke pieces.

Previous software meant implants cost thousands of pounds and had to be printed abroad.

But they can now be made in Miskin in Rhondda Cynon Taff.

The new software, called ADEPT, has been developed by Morriston Hospital, the PDR design research centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University, LPW Technology Ltd and Renishaw.

Previously, designing and printing a 3D implant for a patient required two pieces of expensive software.

The alternative was for surgeons to take off-the-shelf implants and bend them roughly to the right shape.

Stephen Power from Cardiff was one of the first trauma patients to have his face reconstructed using 3D parts after being involved in a motorcycle accident.

But the parts for his operation were printed in Belgium.

A 3D printed implant for a fractured eye socket

ADEPT is just one piece of software which allows surgeons to create the same bespoke implants, such as those used on Mr Power, but for a fraction of the cost.

Morriston Hospital's maxillofacial laboratory services manager Peter Llewelyn Evans said: "Surgeons anywhere in the UK, and indeed the world, will have the facility to design a custom implant that is far more likely to give better results because it fits the patient's original anatomy.

"In the case of an eye fracture it will bring back the original volume of the orbit.

"Likewise, cranioplasty patients can have a contour of the skull that is better than what was available before."

The software is currently being tested and will be trialled in selected units in the UK before going on general release.