Welsh man receives the world’s first surgery using 3D printing

In a surgical milestone, 3D printing has been used to reconstruct the face of a man who was badly injured in a motorcycle accident that left him with broken cheekbones and eye sockets, a fractured skull and a broken jaw. Stephen Power, 29, of Cardiff, Wales, was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in September 2012 that left him with extensive injuries. Besides the serious facial fractures, he also had two broken arms and a badly damaged left leg that required a bone graft.

Doctors at a United Kingdom hospital have broken surgical boundaries by reconstructing the face of a motorcycle-crash survivor using 3D-printing technology. Stephen Power, 29, suffered severe injuries while returning home with friends in Wales nearly two years ago. He broke both of his cheekbones, eye sockets and his upper jaw, in addition to fracturing his skull. Power also broke both of his arms, and banged his right leg up so badly that it needed a bone graft. Power’s life was saved thanks to emergency surgery, but doctors feared doing further damage to the sight in his left eye, which had mostly recovered. This meant that they were not able to put his left cheekbone back in the right place, and did not attempt to reconstruct the bones around the eye’s socket.