Groundbreaking 3D-Printed, Custom-Designed Device Saves Baby's Life
Six-week old Kaiba Gionfriddo was suffering from severe, life-threatening tracheobronchomalacia - collapse of the windpipe which blocks breathing - when his parents found hope at the University of Michigan. There, Glenn Green, M.D. and Scott Hollister, Ph.D., obtained emergency clearance from the FDA to create and implant a tracheal splint for Kaiba made from a biopolymer called polycaprolactone. Green and Hollister made the custom-designed, custom-fabricated device using high-resolution imaging and computer-aided design. The device was created directly from a CT scan of Kaiba's trachea/bronchus, integrating an image-based computer model with laser-based 3D printing to produce the splint. In February, 2012, the splint was sewn around Kaiba's airway to expand the bronchus and give it a skeleton to aid proper growth. It will be reabsorbed by the body over the course of three years. Kaiba was off ventilator support 21 days after the procedure, and now, at 20 months old, he has not had breathing trouble since.
Transcript
00:00:00 (light solemn music) - [Mother] He was six weeks old when we were at a restaurant for dinner one night when he stopped breathing and turned blue on us. He spent ten days in the hospital, then came home. Two days later he ended up getting, turning blue again stopped breathing on us
00:00:19 and prayed every night just hoping that he would pull through. (Solemn orchestral music) Quite a few of the doctors said that he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive. [ Mother] It was the most devastating thing that a parent could ever hear. At that point I think we were both desperate. Anything that would work to make him live.
00:00:44 We pretty much would take it and run with it. No other doctor knew how, to, do anything about it so luckily Dr. Green came up and was able to do something. - Tracheomalacia is collapse of the wind pipe that makes it so a child is unable to breathe out. It's fairly rare,
00:01:03 about one in 2200 children has Tracheomalacia. [Dr. Green] Kaiba is one of those children that had severe Tracheomalacia. Even with the best medical treatments that are available, he continued to have breathing difficulties and continued to have events where he was unable to breathe. We obtained imaging of his defect with a CT scan.
00:01:28 Scott Hollister, instantly and rapidly went about designing a splint that could go and meet this need. This is the first time this procedure has been done anywhere in the world. [Dr. Green] This is a model of Kaiba's trachea and bronchi. The splint is designed to slip over the top of the bronchus just like this.
00:01:50 - This is really the first time I think it's been used on an emergency basis where there was no other treatment available. So we get the plastic, the biopolymer, in a powder form with very small particle size. We also have a computer file that contains information we've designed into the device essentially the geometry of the device et cetera.
00:02:12 It's a biopolymer essentially, a plastic, that's biocompatible and you can use it in the body and it resorbs over time. - [Dr. Green] Kaiba was brought to the operating room. The splint was placed over the top of the bronchus. This has the process of opening the bronchus up anteriorly and posteriorly to completely widen the bronchus. It was amazing.
00:02:36 As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time. We knew that he would be okay. (Solemn orchestral music) - [Mother] It means the world to me, just knowing that something actually worked and was able to save our son's life. Just means everything to me. - [Father] - Yeah, but when he gets older,
00:02:59 he can tell the people his story. It's all it's going to be is the story of his life. How he made it, how he's doing and how far he's gonna go. (orchestral music fades)