Effectiveness of 3d-Modeling 3d-Printing Technologies in Diagnostics and Treatment of Patients With Midfacial Fractures

Abstract

Nowadays, the relevance of the diagnosis and treatment of facial bones, especially the midfacial region, is undoubted. According to scientific literature, the incidence of facial bone fractures is up to 16% in the total structure of fractures [5, 10, 13]. Such injuries can lead to aesthetic disorders in the form of various post-traumatic deformities, often disfiguring the face of patients, as well as lead to functional disorders of varying severity. According to variability of traumatic injuries of the facial bones, polymorphism of clinical manifestations, as well as the aesthetic and functional significance of the area under consideration, the need to individualize the medical and diagnostic process is formed [7–9, 11, 14, 15, 17].
 The individualization of the approach to the diagnosis and treatment of patients is gaining more and more popularity and today is one of the more significant vectors for the development of practical medicine, opening new horizons for specialists in various fields of medical science. One of the most interest directions of this approach is the use of additive manufacturing technologies.
 Additive prototyping and virtual modeling open up wide possibilities for customizing diagnostics and treatment in accordance with a specific clinical situation. Modern computer modeling technologies enable representatives of various medical specialties, including maxillofacial surgeons, not only to be limited to preoperative planning using virtual prototypes of defective zones and also to model structures that replace various bone defects based on additive technologies by printing of high-precision physical models of the damaged zone. In turn, the presence of such means of visualization of injury areas already at the preoperative stage makes it possible to develop individualized augments of bony defects, taking into account all the features of the anatomical structures of a particular patient [1–4, 6, 16].
 The article deals on the results of a comparative study of the effectiveness of surgical treatment of maxillary fractures in the orbital region using an algorithm based on the use of additive manufacturing technologies and traditional methods.