3D printed cranial plates featured on BBC

CUH and Media Studio are in the news with a BBC Look East programme that was screened last night. This shows every stage of the design and production of a titanium plate used by Consultant Neurosurgeon, Mr Adel Helmy, to repair a large defect in a patient's skull following neurosurgery. The programme can be viewed on iPlayer, with the feature on cranial plates starting at 9 minutes, 31 seconds. A short version can be see on the BBC website.

The plates are designed using the patient's CT scan data by Geoff Oliver, Media Studio's 3D Printing Technician and Geoff can be seen in the BBC film working on the CT file. They are printed in a specialist facility in South Wales and are then subjected to a quality control procedure by CUH's Clinical Engineering Department before being sterilised in CUH's Central Sterilisation Department, ready for surgery. 3D printing speeds up the manufacture of cranioplasty plates, helping to reduce both infection rates and costs.