Editor's note: Doctors from eastern China's Zhejiang Province have successfully performed the country’s first vertebrae replacement surgery using 3D-printed vertebrae in the country. The patient, a junior college student from Hangzhou, had a malignant tumor in his 10th and 11th thoracic vertebrae. The surgery was performed at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University on Dec. 3. Doctors replaced the necrotic sections of the vertebrae with a 3D-printed titanium alloy piece. The student is still recovering. 3D printing technology has been widely used in aerospace, industrial design, and architecture in recent years, but its use in the medical field mainly focuses on dentistry, plastic surgery and orthopedics in China.

Dr. Lin Xiangjin, director of the Orthopedics Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, shows reporters a surgical titanium alloy vertebrae piece made by 3D-printing technology on Dec. 11, 2014. [Photo/China.org.cn]

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