An 83-year-old Belgian woman is able to chew, speak and breathe normally again after a machine printed her a new jawbone. Made from a fine titanium powder sculpted by a precision laser beam, her replacement jaw has proven as functional as her own used to be before a potent infection, called osteomyelitis, all but destroyed it.
The medics behind the feat say it is a first. "This is a world premiere, the first time a patient‐specific implant has replaced the entire lower jaw," says Jules Poukens, the researcher who led the operation at Biomed, the biomedical research department of the University of Hasselt, in Belgium. "It's a cautious, but firm step."
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