Badalona’s Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol performs a series of complex aortic aneurysms surgical interventions successfully thanks to prior medical rehearsals with 3D printed prototypes fabricated in the Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC.

The collaboration with Fab Lab Barcelona, which began in November 2016, has allowed the team of Dr. Pere Mas Altés, Vascular Surgeon of the Hospital, to carry out 6 successful operations to date thanks to the surgical practice with abdominal aortas printed in Fab Lab Barcelona, ??the first digital manufacturing laboratory in the European Union located in The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. With these 3D printed models, doctors were able to study the shape of the aneurysms in order to perform the surgery in the briefest and most efficient way.

An aneurysm is a dilatation of the artery that weakens its structure with risk of rupture. Through 3D printing, a real-scale reproduction system of the inflamed area where the surgeons will intervene is achieved. Fab Lab Barcelona project leaders at IAAC Miguel Guerrero and Tomás Martín have been responsibles of using the patient’s TACS to convert the 3D models into data suitable for printing so that they can be transformed into objects.