Home-Hadassah Surgeons Used 3D Printing to Rebuild What Vanishing Bone Disease Took Away
Hadassah Hospitalsurgeons have performed what is believed to be the first surgery of its kind in Israel, using two custom 3D printed implants to reconstruct a pelvis and femur almost entirely destroyed by vanishing bone disease, a condition so rare that very few doctors encounter it in an entire career.
The patient, a 24-year-old woman referred to as Mira, had spent years moving between hospitals without a diagnosis, her leg shortening by around ten centimetres as the bone progressively disappeared. Today, she walks without crutches.
What had begun as an unusual fracture in her femur as a young girl, one her doctors noted was not caused by trauma, gradually revealed itself to be something far more sinister. Repeated examinations failed to identify the cause of her worsening bone weakness. Surgeries were attempted, complications arose, and a hip replacement was put in place. Then, instead of recovery, the bone began to vanish: the replaced head of her femur collapsed into the pelvis, the pain became unrelenting, and Mira eventually found herself in a wheelchair.
The diagnosis, when it finally came after years of genetic testing and multiple opinions, was vanishing bone disease, a condition in which bone tissue is abnormally reabsorbed by the body for reasons medicine has yet to explain.
An Unusual Decision: Rebuild What Is Gone
Referred to Dr. Omer Or, an expert in orthopedic oncology and metabolic bone diseases at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, Mira finally found a physician willing to attempt something unprecedented. After lengthy planning, Dr. Or made an unusual decision: to begin restoring the missing bones entirely.
The treatment unfolded in multiple stages over a year. For the first surgery, in which Dr. Gurion Rivkin, director of the Joint Replacement Unit at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, and surgical nurse Esti Friedlander also participated, two unique implants were designed and 3D printed. The first reconstructed the missing pelvic bone and hip joint.
The second was a custom lengthening implant designed to replace the missing femur and gradually extend up to five centimetres. In a complex, hours-long operation, surgeons removed the old implant, which had migrated into the pelvis, no longer supported by bone that had been almost entirely reabsorbed, and rebuilt the hip joint and femur with the new custom pieces. For the first time in years, the hip joint was restored to its anatomical position, and the leg was lengthened by three centimetres in that single operation.
Post-operatively, Mira used a specialised home device powered by a gentle electric current, applied to the implant lengthening site three times daily. With each session, the implant extended incrementally. The original plan called for one millimetre of extension per day over approximately fifty days, around five centimetres in total. But Mira’s body responded better than expected, and the leg was ultimately lengthened by an additional five centimetres after the operation, bringing the total gain to eight centimetres, followed by an intensive rehabilitation period.
Source: 3D Printing Industry
