Far more than a simple hinge, the human knee is a complex, intricate mechanism, and a knee injury is a painful and debilitating of condition that’s difficult and expensive to repair. Duke University is developing a cartilage-like material based on hydrogel that may make the task of repairing knees easier. The 3D-printable hydrogel allows bioengineers to create bespoke artificial replacement parts for injured knees that are tailored to match the old part both in shape and mechanical properties.
3D printing has been a boon to surgeons. By using virtual models of a patient’s body parts from computer tomography or magnetic resonance imaging scans, surgeons can provide new hips, cranial sections, and spinal vertebrae that are close matches to the original. They’re even used to produce detailed models of the human heart for cardiac surgeons to plan complicated operations or to fashion mechanical implants that fit exactly.