3D printing as a pedagogical tool for teaching normal human anatomy: a systematic review

Abstract

Background Three-dimensional-printed anatomical models (3DPAMs) appear to be a relevant tool due to their educational value and their feasibility. The objectives of this review were to describe and analyse the methods utilised for creating 3DPAMs used in teaching human anatomy and for evaluating its pedagogical contribution. Methods An electronic search was conducted on PubMed using the following terms: education, school, learning, teaching, learn, teach, educational, three-dimensional, 3D, 3-dimensional, printing, printed, print, anatomy, anatomical, anatomically, and anatomic. Data retrieved included study characteristics, model design, morphological evaluation, educational performance, advantages, and disadvantages. Results Of the 68 articles selected, the cephalic region was the most studied (33 articles); 51 articles mentioned bone printing. In 47 articles, the 3DPAM was designed from CT scans. Five printing processes were listed. Plastic and its derivatives were used in 48 studies. The cost per design ranged from 1.25 USD to 2800 USD. Thirty-seven studies compared 3DPAM to a reference model. Thirty-three articles investigated educational performance. The main advantages were visual and haptic qualities, effectiveness for teaching, reproducibility, customizability and manipulability, time savings, integration of functional anatomy, better mental rotation ability, knowledge retention, and educator/student satisfaction. The main disadvantages were related to the design: consistency, lack of detail or transparency, overly bright colours, long printing time, and high cost. Conclusion This systematic review demonstrates that 3DPAMs are feasible at a low cost and effective for teaching anatomy. More realistic models require access to more expensive 3D printing technologies and substantially longer design time, which would greatly increase the overall cost. Choosing an appropriate image acquisition modality is key. From a pedagogical viewpoint, 3DPAMs are effective tools for teaching anatomy, positively impacting the learning outcomes and satisfaction level. The pedagogical effectiveness of 3DPAMs seems to be best when they reproduce complex anatomical areas, and they are used by students early in their medical studies.

A Meta-Review about Medical 3D Printing

“…Non-invasive devices are external applications, like 3DP models. The medical fields included are anesthesia [1], cardiology [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], coloproctology [14], dentistry [15][16][17][18], general surgery [19][20][21][22][23][24][25], health care engineering [26,27], hepatology [28], interventional radiology [29], medical education [30][31][32][33][34], neurosurgery [35][36][37][38][39], oncology [40][41][42][43] and radiation oncology [44][45][46]. Further medical fields included are oral and maxillofacial surgery [47][48][49]<...…”

“…It was mostly used for pre-operative planning [2, 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46-48, 52-54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 69-76, 78, 90, 92, 96, 97, 102, 103]. Other combinations found were pre-operative planning and teaching [3, 4, 7-9, 12, 14, 20, 24, 25, 28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 51, 55, 58, 62, 77, 79, 84, 86, 88, 104], pre-operative planning, teaching and patient counseling [6, 11, 42, 59, 83, 85, 89, 91, 93-95, 98, 99, 101, 105, 106], teaching [1,[29][30][31][32][33][80][81][82], pre-opertive planning and patient counseling [40,50,65,66,87,100] and patient counseling [68]. The top three countries, with most publications originated from, in alphabetical order, are Australia [1,6,7,16,22,28,45,53,68,99,[101][102][103][104], China [9,30,41,57,60,61,65,69,72,74,75,…”

Tendências investigativas contemporâneas no ensino-aprendizagem de anatomia humana no Brasil

“…Para fins de comparação, é possível concluir, a partir de Zhao et al 24 , Zargaran et al 25 , Owolabi et al 26 , Brumpt et al 27 e Maani et al 28 , que em outros países o ensino de anatomia já está mais associado ao uso de tecnologias e RV.…”

“…Brumpt et al 27 Por fim, Owolabi et al 26 estudaram a opinião de 79 professores de anatomia de 11 países africanos. Esse professores indicaram a tecnologia como uma "ferramenta de ensino complementar aos cadáveres", a qual "não pode substituir a experiência da vida real com cadáveres", e o fator mais importante para aceitação de ferramentas complementares foi o grau de fidedignidade da representação.…”

Everyone can draw: An inclusive and transformative activity for conceptualization of topographic anatomy

“…42 A systematic review of 68 published articles has recently investigated the value of three-dimensional printing in anatomy education across multiple pedagogical, cognitive, and technical elements. 43 Low costs, bespoke designs and modifications, ease of handling, and enhanced student satisfaction, were all identified as major advantages of using three-dimensional printed models as supplements to traditional anatomy teaching. 37,43,44 Limitations largely surrounded physical properties of the models, including level of detail and visual appearance.…”