3D printing in neurosurgery

Three-dimensional (3D) printing (3DP) has seen spectacular progress in recent years, making it widely available to consumers and researchers, but it has also been steadily expanding its capabilities while becoming more and more affordable. This progress has allowed 3DP technology to be seriously tested in various fields of Medicine and Biomedical Technology. Neurological Surgery is widely considered to be among the most demanding and intricate medical specialties, as it concerns fine and highly critical neural and vascular elements even during standard interventions or the most common pathological conditions. As such, advances in 3DP were quick to be applied to neurosurgical practice (depicting brain aneurysms), research and development (spine and disc models), and neurosurgical education. In the past years, we have seen progress in four main distinct directions for the use of 3DP technologies within the prism of Neurological Surgery, where we also envision future progress: (a) neurovascular physiological anatomy and its associated disorders, (b) complex central nervous system tumors and neuroanatomy, (c) spine instrumentation, deformities, and biomechanical implications, and (d) educational purposes, prototyping of implants, devices, and equipment. In this chapter, we critically review the progress of 3DP technology within each of these described directions and discuss the impact it can possibly have on specific diseases and on the Neurosurgical Specialty as a whole in the years to come.