Kidney Transplant Of A 3-Year Old Girl Made Possible With The Aid Of 3D Printing

A toddler's life was saved, thanks to a successful kidney transplant made possible with the help of 3D printing technology. The transplant meant an end to the agonizing years of dialysis that three-year old Lucy Boucher had gone through.

The case of Lucy Boucher is considered the world's first where 3D printing technology was utilized in a kidney transplant. The plastic models of the kidney of her father, Chris, and Lucy's abdomen were printed by feeding CT and MRI scans into the 3D printer. 

According to Chris, "The great thing about the 3D technology was that really then gave us an actual physical representation of what my kidney in Lucy's abdomen really looked like." The BBC also reported that the surgeons of Great Ormond Street Hospital at London were able to rehearse each delicate step of the transplant. 

Lucy was only four-weeks old when she suffered from a heart failure. This deprived her kidneys with oxygen, which inevitably lead to their failure. After which, she had to go through continuous dialysis up until the time that her body was capable of a transplant.

Her father, Chris Boucher, donated his kidney to her. Due to the disparity in size between the abdomen of Lucy and her father's kidney, her doctors resorted to 3D printing technology to get a better picture of the structure of Lucy's abdomen. It allowed her doctors to carefully plan the surgery, so that they can properly fit Chris' kidney in the toddler's abdomen.

UTV illustrated the enthusiasm of Panjak Chandak, one of the transplant specialists. He said, "This is very exciting for us because Lucy was our first case and we're hoping, although it's early days, we're hoping to use technology and innovation to help other children of complex problems and hopefully it will help us carry out transplants [in] more children."

In an interview at the Victoria Derbyshire Show, the parents of Lucy - Chris and Ciara Boucher, said that "brilliant medical teams" were taking care of their little girl. They feel very fortunate at the success of the operation, and their little girl is now very active, which they were very happy about.