In a world-first procedure, doctors in Australia have used a 3D printer to help build a 71-year-old man a new heel bone and save him from losing his leg to cancer.
Doctors used scans of Len Chandler's left heel bone to create a 3D image of his right one.
They then used the 3D version to help construct an exact replica of the bone, the calcaneus, where a tumour had taken over, 'Herald Sun' reported.
Patients with advanced cancer in the calcaneus often lose the leg below the knee as it is too difficult to replace the highly complex bone.
Chandler can already carry more than half his body weight following the groundbreaking surgery in July. He is expected to be off crutches before the end of this year.
When diagnosed with cartilage cancer in April, Chandler was referred to St Vincent's Hospital surgeon Professor Peter Choong who has been developing new techniques with 3D printing.
The process has been used for simpler non-weight-bearing structures such as sections of skull, but Choong believed recent technical advances meant a new-generation implant was possible.
Scans of Chandler's tumour-free left foot were sent to Melbourne-based implant manufacturer Anatomics, which created a mirror-image design to help in the development of a replacement heel, the report said.
The firm called in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which was able to use its state-of-the-art Arcam 3D printer to build the implant from titanium.
