A new course at the Faculty of Medicine of Bar Ilan University in Safed will focus on tissue regeneration and XNUMXD printing for therapeutic needs
The Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University in the Galilee will offer a new course, which aims to provide exposure to the field of using innovative 3D-based technologies for medical treatment. The course will be led by Prof. Samer Srouji, director of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Galilee Medical Center.
The course, called "Tomorrow's Medicine - An Introduction to Tissue Regeneration and 21D Printing", will be delivered by the Department of Oral, Facial and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Galilee Medical Center. The field of tissue engineering, planning and XNUMXD printing began to develop in the nineties and advanced greatly in the XNUMXst century with the development of medical technologies and advanced implant materials such as titanium or polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK). In recent years, more and more clinicians are getting to know engineers, universities and start-up companies from the field in order to offer patients personalized medicine that is fundamentally better and more accurate.
"Until the development of 3D technology, it was not possible to customize devices and implants," Prof. Saroji explains. "The principle underlying the technology is the development of personalized devices for patients. In the field of medicine, 3D printing is designed to provide personalized treatment in surgeries that are performed today with conventional methods. As an example, the new options we use today allow the customization of braces, so that the treatment becomes more precise and shorter More. Technologies of this type are already applied in several medical fields such as mouth and jaw, neurosurgery, orthopedics and more."
According to Prof. Saroji, in the area of the mouth and jaw, the clinicians are required to deal with extremely complex anatomy and with the restoration of structures for which there is substantial difficulty in fitting implants, without careful preliminary planning. In light of the existing gap in the means to repair complex structures such as the eye socket, sinuses and jaws, in an optimal way, the need arose to produce precise standards.
In the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Galilee Medical Center, under the leadership of Professor Srouji, a clinical center was established for the design and 3D printing of customized implants. The guiding principle at the center is 3D Point-of-Care - XNUMXD-based treatment, derived from the tissue defect that must be restored individually for the patients. Recently, the center was renewed with a biological XNUMXD printer, the only one of its kind in the country, which is used for advanced research in the field of engineering and printing of bone and cartilage tissues.
"Out of the gap and the lack of familiarity of clinicians with the field and the innovative treatment options, the idea arose to join forces between the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in Nahariya with the training of medical students at the Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University," Prof. Saroji's story about what led to the opening of the course. "As part of the course that will be delivered in the pre-clinical years, the male and female students will be introduced to advanced, unusual clinical knowledge that is not included in the routine syllabus of medical students."
Students in the course will learn about the medical revolution that led to the development of the XNUMXD field, medical imaging, segmentation and XNUMXD modeling of implants. The course will present XNUMXD-based treatment methods aimed at restoring a tissue deficiency resulting from trauma in the head and neck area, supplementing a deficiency due to the removal of cancerous lesions, treatments to correct congenital deformities, and more. In addition, the course will teach chapters on tissue engineering, advanced tissue cultures, and an introduction to the field of bioprinting - combining the principles of XNUMXD printing and tissue engineering to create biological tissue implants.
The field that will be studied in the new course is in a development boom. Prof. Saroji explains that medicine today is in transition from the use of 3D technologies and inert materials that are not absorbed, to the use of biological substances known to the body, the chance of rejection is significantly lower. At the same time, these materials pass much better and more naturally in the body, unlike metals such as titanium which are never absorbed.
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