The 3D Fine Print

3D printing is making advances in healthcare by preparing doctors for complicated cases and customising solutions for patients. But there’s a long way to go before it becomes the standard procedure for treatment.

- KathaKali Chanda

In February 2015, Dr Swati Garekar, a paediatric cardiologist at Fortis Hospital in Mumbai’s Mulund, was tied in knots over a 9-month-old with an abnormal hole in the heart. The child, the son of a policeman from Nagpur, had DORV (double outlet right ventricle), a congenital heart condition in which two big arteries emerged out of the right ventricle of the heart, instead of one each from the right and the left. It led to pure and impure blood getting mixed and required a complex surgical fix. But neither an echocardiogram nor a CT scan could give Garekar a detailed picture of the mess inside the heart that would barely be bigger than the baby’s fist. “Which way would the surgeon go in? What should be the best procedure? Say, we open up the patient, put him on bypass, reach his heart and see that the insides are not what we thought?” asks Garekar.