After 10 years of fundamental and preclinical research lead by Distinguished Professor Dietmar W Hutmacher and his interdisciplinary team, a world first breast implant trial in Australia aims to provide a safer alternative to permanent silicone implants.
The interdisciplinary research team from HBI, BellaSeno, QUT, CBCI (and many other partners), developed a ‘scaffold guided tissue engineering conception’ from bench to bedside’. The implementation trials are currently taking place at Metro North Health in Brisbane!
Well, put simply, scientists use a cutting-edge 3D printer technology to additive manufacture a biodegradable scaffold that guides the biological regeneration of a woman’s breast. The highly porous scaffold is made from the same group of medical grade biomaterials used for dissolvable sutures used in millions of patients every day.
Surgeons explanted a silicon implant which the patient received more than a decade ago and implanted the biodegradable in combination with patients own tissue scaffold in the same surgery session. The scaffold acts as a structural guiding template for the patient’s own tissue and after 3-4 years after implantation, the scaffold will completely resorbed by natural process similar as by bioresorbable sutures.
Once dissolved, the patient’s own newly-formed tissue will remain where the scaffold once was. This solution aims to prevent the complications or illnesses that occur as a result of silicone breast implants.
To learn more about this innovation, you can visit the following links:
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https://10play.com.au/news/