Guzmán Robador | Alicante (EFE).- Young researchers from Alicante have developed a system that simulates anatomical models of arterial networks in a real way and ‘à la carte’ for any patient, using 3D printing, and which is already being applied to plan and test aneurysm operations brain in the Department of Neuroradiology of the Hospital General Universitario de Alicante Doctor Balmis.
The one in Alicante is the first public hospital in Spain that uses this innovative technology for surgical training in those complicated cases in the specialty of vascular interventional neuroradiology due to its greater technical difficulty or because the material that will have to be used is unknown beforehand. in the operation, especially in cerebral aneurysms (bulges in blood vessels in the brain that can inflate and burst, causing brain bleeding).
The preparation of the intervention gives the surgeon greater security when carrying out the operation ‘in vivo’ later, having previously acquired experience of the case during the surgical trial in which he has handled the simulator that imitates the real model of the patient’s arterial system.
The invention, whose patent is registered, is the result of a year and a half of work by biomedical engineers linked to the University of Alicante (UA), in coordination from the beginning with the Alicante Institute for Health and Biomedical Research (ISABIAL).
multidisciplinary project
This multidisciplinary project has led ISABIAL, of which the Alicante-General Hospital Health Department is a part, and the UA to recently launch the Biomedical Design and Manufacturing Mixed Research Unit (BIOFAB) for the development of innovations focused on surgical planning, medical instrumentation, clinical simulation, orthotics and prosthetics, and support products, through 3D printing.
“Aneurysms do not usually give any symptoms, they pass silently, and, generally, we cannot diagnose them”, unless the bulge in the blood vessel bursts or is detected by chance when a person, for example, undergoes an MRI for another reason. , as explained by the head of the Neuroradiology Service of the General University Hospital of Alicante Doctor Balmis and member of BIOFAB, doctor José Ignacio Gallego.
In an interview with EFE, together with the researcher Javier Esclapés, scientific director of BIOFAB and member of ISABIAL and the UA, Dr. Gallego stated that half of the people who suffer a brain hemorrhage from an aneurysm die instantly, a 25% die in hospital or are left with “serious sequelae” and the other 25% (a quarter) “end up acceptably well” after receiving hospital care and undergoing treatment.
He has indicated that they have already carried out surgical training with various patients in his unit with the simulator and has indicated that these cases carried out later in the ‘live’ operation have gone well, without complications or incidents.
“For interventional neuroradiology, the natural pathways that every human being has to access the brain are the arteries and veins” and “the great innovation” of the system lies in the fact that “it is navigable, we work inside the arteries, and it replicates the path that we are going to need until we reach the aneurysm”, he said.
Save surgical time
For his part, Esclapés has detailed that the simulator of the patient’s arterial system is configured from the images obtained from his pathology through computerized axial tomography (CT), resonance or arteriography.
The particularity of this invention is that a system has been made in which the vast majority of the arteries are fixed, rigid and durable, which have been designed on a real model (a standard patient). Being modular, it also makes it possible to have a flexible part, which is personalized according to each case, where the injured cerebral arteries appear, which allows the surgeon to test directly as if he were the real patient, the researcher has described.
Another advantage of the system is that it significantly saves surgical time and reduces the cost of material used in this type of surgery (minimally invasive).
In addition, it helps the patient to understand their situation by being able to contemplate the injury they are suffering from in the office with the simulator in front of them and it is used for the training and teaching of medical students, since they can do practices with “real” models, avoiding clinical trials. with animals and without radiation.
Aneurysm, a pathology of young people
Brain aneurysm is “a pathology of young people” and its consequences are “very devastating” because it can truncate “a professional career” and personal projects at “a very early moment in life”, according to Dr. Gallego.
In turn, Esclapés has stated that they have the support of ISABIAL and the UA for the design and protection of the invention, but for the moment they have not received more public funding for its development, and has revealed that there are multinationals with delegations in Spain, mainly from the US, who have shown interest in the simulator. EFE