Customised titanium implant fabricated in additive manufacturing for craniomaxillofacial surgery

Customised implants manufacture has always presented difficulties which result in high cost and complex fabrication, mainly due to patients' anatomical differences. The solution has been to produce prostheses with different sizes and use the one that best suits each patient. Additive manufacturing (AM) as a technology from engineering has been providing several advancements in the medical field, particularly as far as fabrication of implants is concerned. The use of additive manufacturing in medicine has added, in an era of development of so many new technologies, the possibility of performing the surgical planning and simulation by using a three-dimensional (3D) physical model, very faithful to the patient's anatomy. AM is a technology that enables the production of models and implants directly from the 3D virtual model (obtained by a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) system, computed tomography or magnetic resonance) facilitating surgical procedures and reducing risks. Furthermore, additive manufacturing has ...