The efficacy of 3D printing-assisted surgery in treating distal radius fractures: systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Aim: To compare the efficacy of 3D printing-assisted surgery with routine surgery in the treatment of distal radius fractures to evaluate whether 3D printing technology has more advantages. Materials & methods: To retrieve all published studies that compared the efficacy of 3D printing-assisted surgery with routine surgery for distal radius fractures. Operation time, frequency of intraoperative fluoroscopy, blood loss and other outcomes were assessed. Results: The results suggested that 3D printing-assisted surgery was better than routine surgery in the fields of operation time, frequency of intraoperative fluoroscopy, and blood loss. Conclusion: In the treatment of distal radius fractures, 3D printing-assisted surgery may be superior to routine surgery.

3D printing assisted MIPO for treatment of complex middle-proximal humeral shaft fractures

“…Firstly, 3D printing is capable to construct initial fracture models using CT data according to the radiographic projections, which helps to visually understand the fracture type and direction of displacement and provides an alternative option to surgery related to complicate proximal-middle humeral shaft fractures [21]. It is possible to conduct detailed preoperative plans of reduction that adopt the optimal procedure to reduce surgery time, blood loss and c-arm usage time [22]. Besides, 3D printing model has many advantages to patients and young surgeons, which allows them to understand the condition intuitively, encouraging them to be clear about the di culties and risks of the surgery, and to improve the clinician-patient relationship [23].…”

A Meta-Review about Medical 3D Printing

“…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 [9,30,41,57,60,61,65,69,72,74,75,84,96,105,...…”

“…Regarding the 3DP techniques and materials this topic is only briefly mentioned, as we focused more on the medical fields and applications. For completeness the following papers are included [27,72,[144][145][146][147][148][149]. The materials used in bioprinting are alginate, gelatin and GelMA [144,147].…”

“…Procedures include orthopedic surgery [25, 57–77, 95–97]. More precisely foot and ankle fracture fixation [76], tibial plateau fracture surgery [73, 74], open reduction and internal fixation surgery [75, 97], fracture surgery [57, 60–65, 69, 71, 72, 74, 95, 96], treatment of pelvic ring injuries [70], osteotomy [58, 66], total hip and knee arthroplasty [67]. Quinones and colleagues mention [77] complex enbloc resections of primary vertebral tumors, complex cran-iocervical junction surgeries, spinal deformity correction surgeries, fracture-dislocations of the thoracic and lumbar spine, minimally invasive surgery, disc replacement surgery.…”

“…The top three countries, with most publications originated from, in alphabetical order, are Australia [1, 6, 7, 16, 22, 28, 45, 53, 68, 99, 101–104], China [9, 30, 41, 57, 60, 61, 65, 69, 72, 74, 75, 84, 96, 105, 107] and United States [29, 31, 35, 37–40, 43, 44, 48, 59, 94, 98, 108–110].…”