Replacement knee parts…from a printer?

With the nice weather that we’re expecting, you might want to try to walk off some of that Thanksgiving turkey. But if you have knee pain, that may not be possible.

“It was at an angle and it sheared the (anterior cruciate ligament) completely.”

That’s Michele Budd talking about her first knee injury. That was in 2001.

She had a second injury years later and in July, she had a third.

Budd said, “As much as I didn’t want surgery, I knew that it was the only option to fix what was wrong,”

She met with Dr. Ronald Royce at Front Range Orthopaedics in Colorado Springs, where she found out about a new procedure.

The parts used in the knee replacement surgery are custom made for each patient using a 3-D printer.

Budd was a little surprised when she found out where her new knee was coming from.

“(I) didn’t realize it was going to be a 3-D printed knee,” she said.

The laser precision of a 3-D printer helps get the measurements exact.

Royce said,”We’re re-creating the anatomy. And what’s so important about that is that the knee can bend in a normal fashion.”

Watching Budd, you wouldn’t believe that the surgery was done only two months ago.

“Two weeks after the surgery I go into the physical therapy and I’m riding the recumbent bicycle for 15 minutes with no pain,” she said.

A Massachusetts based company called ConforMIS came up with this concept a few years ago and Royce said that more body parts may be coming from printers in the future.

“Hip replacement surgeries and shoulder replacement surgeries (can be done) applying this same technology,” he said.

So that more patients can get their pain relieved, permanently.

Dr. Royce said that he’s performed about three dozen knee replacement surgeries with printed parts and said that all of the patients are doing great so far.