Selective laser sintering at the Point-of-Care 3D printing laboratory in hospitals for cranio-maxillo-facial surgery: A further step into industrial additive manufacturing made available to clinicians

Additive manufacturing has developed rapidly in recent years and has many useful applications in the clinical field. In particular, cranio-maxillo-facial (CMF) surgery requires high precision, which can be obtained with 3D printed patient-specific surgical guides and anatomical models. Among the many different printing options, selective laser sintering (SLS) seems to be rarely used in point-of-care applications, considering its apparent characteristics.

This article examines the advantages and disadvantages of SLS printers for CMF point-of-care (PoC) by reviewing the literature and comparing in-house printed SLS and stereolithography (SLA) prints.

The investigation showed that the easily sterilizable and robust materials processed by SLS printing are well suited for CMF surgical guides and have clear advantages over SLA parts.

Some barriers to the use of SLS printers in PoC are likely to be the slightly higher complexity and cost.

However, these will decrease as 3D printing technology advances and surgeon acceptance increases, making SLS a practical PoC tool.