Technologists use 3D printing to aid cancer treatment

LOVELAND — Time waits for no one, or so said Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in a song of that name. The same is true of technology.

Yet sometimes people wait for technology to catch up.

Medical technologists in multiple fields have been laboring since the advent of 3D printing in manufacturing to apply its principles to medicine. And having success.

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This year, a Cleveland Clinic doctor received FDA approval for 3D-printed airway stents designed to fit the individual patient.

Doctors have begun to use 3D printed models of their patients’ anatomies in order to exactly fit coronary stents.

And in October, the Australian National Science Agency reported the development of 3D printed coronary stents used to treat Peripheral Arterial Disease.

Closer to home, medical professionals at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Centers at McKee Medical Center in Loveland and North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley have begun to use 3D technology to create devices to improve the treatment of patients needing radiation therapy.

Alexander Markovic, PhD, a physicist with Banner, turned to his 3D printing hobby when a friend undergoing treatment needed help.

“Stents are used in radiation oncology [for head and neck cancers] to keep a patient’s mouth open and to push the tongue to the right or left side. Commercial products fall short when they don’t open the mouth wide enough or don’t push the tongue correctly,” Markovic told BizWest.

“One of my friends was coming into our department, and she couldn’t open her mouth wide enough,” he said.

Without a stent, patients can move their jaws around “and that’s not good,” he said. The purpose of the stent is to rigidly position the jaw and teeth in the correct position so that the radiation can be directed at the cancerous tissue each and every time treatment occurs and avoid healthy tissue.

Markovic had been playing around with 3D printing as a hobby and making cases to hold electronics, toys for kids, and parts to fix things around the house.

“I might have an artist inside of me. I like to be able to print something that I design, an object that I can hold. I thought maybe I could create a line of these [stents] that could be available in different sizes to fit the patient,” Markovic said. Commercial stents come in limited sizes.

Using a computer-aided design program similar to programs that dentists use, he set out to create stents. The same printer that previously produced toy tanks and guns for kids created 10 or 15 configurations of re-usable stents.

It takes about eight hours to produce one, so he can quickly output a model specific for a patient if something in stock doesn’t quite fit.

Then, using dental trays to hold impression material, technologists create an impression of the patient’s teeth so that the stent will go back into the mouth exactly the same way with each radiation treatment.

Two prongs help the stent integrate with the face mask that is used to keep the patient’s face from moving.

“It’s not comfortable, but we’re thinking of them not moving,” Markovic said.

David Groves, a Berthoud patient undergoing radiation treatment for cancer in his right tonsil and right lymph nodes, agreed that the stents are not comfortable.

“After about the third time, you get used to it,” he said. “The first couple of times it feels weird.”

Groves, when interviewed by BizWest, said he was on day 23 of 30 days of treatment. The device pushes his tongue to the left side of his mouth so the radiation doesn’t affect the back of the tongue.

Markovic began using the printed stents in June and has had multiple patients use them so far.

Markovic receives calls from other radiology professionals, and he’s on a national guidance team that will benefit from a document he is creating to share the technique.

The holy grail for medical technologists is the creation of 3D printed organs for transplant. Use of 3D printed stents is a far distance from that development. Organs will just have to wait for time — and technology — to catch up.