Groundbreaking Opposite Lung Transplant, Thanks to 3D Printing

Doctors at the Kyoto University Hospital in Japan have performed a major surgery which has never been done before. With the help of 3D printers to create models of the patients chest cavity and a donor's lung, they were able to perform the world's first ever opposite lung transplant on a woman in her 40's. Typically a donor will offer his/her lung of the same side that the donors needs. In this surgery however, the donor's left lung was too small, so they took a piece of his right lung. Because of how complicated the surgery is due to the fact that the lung is reversed, they needed to practice on a model of the patient before hand. Read the full story here: http://3dprint.com/4013/living-donor...ung-transplant

Here is a picture of the 3D printed chest cavity that surgeons used for this procedure:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload.../lung-feat.jpg

At Texas A&M we had to design an artificial lung as a group project. And of course, we 3D-Printed our design. The big problem is the materials don't exist yet to do this for real. But they are trying to get us prepared for a few years from now when the materials do exist.