PennDesign’s Fabrication Lab Teams Up With Veterinary School for Life-Saving Surgery

Thanks to a pioneering medical application of 3D printing, a rescue dog named Clubber has a new lease on life. It’s the result of a three-year exchange between the Fabrication Laboratory at the School of Design and the School of Veterinary Medicine, and a vivid illustration how interdisciplinary collaboration can produce impactful new uses for existing technologies.

Clubber, a seven-year old pit bull mix, had developed a large growth above his eyebrow that was damaging his skull and pushing on his brain. He needed the growth to be removed and his skull to be reconstructed—a radical resection and facial reconstruction. But doctors needed a way to minimize the dog’s time under anesthesia in a procedure that was already expected to take eight hours. So they turned to the Fab Lab for a 3D model, which enabled them to rehearse the procedure in advance, carefully planning how they would implant a piece of titanium mesh and affix it to Clubber’s skull.

The process starts with the collection of digital data from a CT scan, which is painstakingly converted to stereolithography (STL) format in order to translate the data into multiple surfaces. The STL file is manipulated in Rhino, the go-to 3D modeling software for architects and designers, and sent to a printer that sprays binder in .007” layers, which are held together by chemical binders. Several hours later, the model is “cured”—impregnated with cyanoacrylate and left to harden for strength. The powder prints even have bonelike texture and density, which help doctors anticipate complications that could arise in surgery.

Fab Lab staffers Stephen Smeltzer, Mike Stifel, and Kaori Ikeuchi worked with Dr. Jonathan Wood, a resident in neurology and neurosurgery at Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital. According to Dr. Wood, he consulted closely with his colleagues in dentistry, oral surgery, general surgery and ophthalmology, centering on the model of Clubber’s skull.

“You need to be as aggressive as you can, while being as safe as possible,” Dr. Wood explains. In Clubber’s case, the Penn Vet team wouldn’t have attempted surgery without being able to work with a 3D printed model in advance. In the long term, the model also serves as a teaching specimen in veterinary courses on anatomy.

Dennis Pierattini, the Fab Lab’s manager, and his team began working with Dr. Wood two years ago, but Clubber’s case was the first in which circumstances allowed doctors to go ahead with surgery. The team’s first case involved replicating a partial skull for a 10-month old Bearded Collie. Most recently, the team succeeded in printing the complete scan of a 10-year old Labrador Retriever’s skull; the model used three different colors to delineate the skull from a brain tumor and the connective rods that held the parts together.

“We’re used to this technology pushing the envelope on what architecture or design can be, so a lot of our work is theoretical,” says the Fab Lab’s Stephen Smeltzer of 3D printing. “When there’s been a real-world application for what we do, it’s pretty amazing.”

In the eight weeks since his surgery, Clubber has made a full recovery. When Dr. Wood checked in on him last week, the patient was back to racing around outside in the spring-like weather.