Posted on 02/25/2014 8:35:26 AM PST by fishtank
Louisville Kentucky cardiothoracic surgeon Erle Austin has performed successful heart repair surgery on a 14 month old infant named Roland Lian Cung Bawi — heart surgery on such a young patient is not unheard of, of course, what's new is that Austin was able to map out his surgical approach using a nearly exact model of the patients heart—it had been printed on a 3D printer.
Young Roland had been born with four congenital heart defects—doctors had known since before he was born that his heart had problems. Fixing them all would prove to be a challenge. When it came time to plan the surgery, Austin consulted with other surgeons and found each of them had different ideas on the best way to fix the heart. The ideal approach would involve the least amount of cutting and suturing—but that can be hard to plan using only conventional scanning techniques. Looking for more precision, Austin turned to the engineering school at the University of Louisville—they'd been researching different kinds of 3D printing technology. Researchers at the University worked with radiologists at Kosair Children's Hospital to create a means for converting data from a CT scan of Roland's heart to data that could be used with a 3D printer. The two seemed a perfect match as CT scanning uses the same basic idea as 3D printing—it takes pictures of slices and puts them together on a computer screen to form a whole, and 3D printing is achieved by laying down one layer or "slice" of material at a time.
Ping
At the end of the video, the immigrant dad is heard to say, “If we were in Burma, I don’t think he (my son) would survive.”
My main thought as I heard him say that, was THANK YOU, God, that You created this nation of America by the influence of Your Word.
You inflamed the minds of millions of Americans with the Truth that we as humans have a dominion mandate to work against the effects of the fallen creation, that we should work to SAVE lives, that all human life is priceless and valuable.
I am PROUD of America because of this story, and I am THANKFUL that decades of medical knowledge has brought us to this victory of technology and compassion.
I only HOPE that we can survive the current DWI (demagoguing while in-office).
Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHSD0tR2IOU
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