3D Printing Is Changing Medicine

Here it is — I strongly recommend downloading the video.

It must be true, because it is presented by Robin Roberts, apparently anchorhuman of ABC’s Good Morning America.

Whether it is a prosthetic hand for a little girl or someday a human heart made of human heart type cells that beat, this application of 3d printing is to me the most dramatic use of computer technology on humans yet.

I can barely define 3d printing: A printer that puts material onto what it prints so the result is a three-dimensional entity.

It is far easier for me to define the problems of transplantation because way back when I lived and practiced in Oklahoma I was the psychiatrist/psychopharmacologist on a liver transplant team. You see, all drugs are metabolized either through the liver or the kidneys. I had to make sure that patients with impaired organs could metabolize those necessary drugs — such as anti-rejection medicine.

Everything that I do, each antidepressant or anti-anxiety drug (or,heaven forbid. every antipsychotic) had to have dosage calibrated to liver function.

And these patients were scared and had human problems (but usually more than other humans).

There was tissue typing, and anti-rejection drugs.

The patients were a lively subculture.

As in so many of the subspecialties I have practiced, I will be as obsolete as a dinosaur.

Now a doctor (or more probably, a nurse practitioner) need only communicate the particularity of the desired organ to the printer.