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20-year-old patient before the operation and with a new ear from the 3D printer
Photo: Kristi Bruno / AFP
An unprecedented medical intervention on a woman from Mexico could be groundbreaking for people suffering from microtia.
This is a rare deformity of the outer ear.
Those affected are born with one or both incomplete ears, the shell is too small and misshapen.
Patients can often hear less well or not at all.
Doctors have now transplanted the woman a new ear that comes from the 3D printer and was created from her own cells.
This has never been done before, according to a biotechnology company that developed the process.
A San Antonio doctor from the Microtia Congenital Ear Institute performed the procedure in March.
The operation is part of an ongoing clinical study under the supervision of the US regulatory authority FDA (Food and Drug Administration) with a total of eleven patients.
Final results are not yet available, but will be published later in a medical journal.
The ear is currently healing well, continues to grow and generate cartilage tissue, they say.
Little is known about the biotec company's process.
But apparently the team based the design of the artificial organ on the woman's left ear.
Her new right ear was printed into a corresponding mold from cells taken from the cartilage tissue of the healthy ear.
It is correspondingly difficult for experts to assess the approach of the experts.
But according to Adam Feinberg, a professor of biomedical engineering and materials science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the process is a "big deal."
The expert, who is not connected to the company and works on similar 3D printing processes himself, told the »New York Times« that the intervention shows that it is basically only a matter of time before such technologies will be used for regenerative medicine will be widely used.
Hope for transplantation medicine
The procedure should give hope for relief, especially for people with microtia.
Every year in Germany 100 to 150 people are born with such a malformation, the causes of which are not yet clear.
So far, the ear of newborns, whose cartilage is easily changeable in the first few weeks of life, has been adapted with ear molds made of silicone.
Operations are only possible from a later age.
For example, a surgical construction with the body's own costal cartilage is carried out.
The advantage of the new process, which is only intended to be the beginning of a new type of transplant, is that the body's own cells are used in the 3D printing process.
This minimizes the risk of rejection.
So far, no reactions or other unexpected health complications have been observed in the ongoing study.
The Biotec specialists therefore hope that the process will also be used in other areas of transplantation medicine, including the creation of organs.
Other scientists and companies are also working on medical 3D techniques.
In animal experiments they were successful years ago with the transplantation of cartilage, bone and muscle tissue from the printer.
There are also first attempts to produce organs in this way.
Three years ago, researchers from Israel made a small heart out of human tissue.
Blood vessels and an artificial lung have also been created.
But there is still a long way to go before printed organs will supplement or completely replace the always scarce human donor organs.
Adam Feinberg agrees.
He points out that an external ear, which is more cosmetic than functional, is a relatively easy task when compared to organs such as the liver, kidneys, heart or lungs.
Just the way from the ear to a functional intervertebral disc, which is produced with such artificial processes, is quite a big leap.
But the printing process with the ear is now one step further.
joe
