Madrid's Gregorio Marañón Hospital has managed to avoid the amputation of a leg thanks to a pioneering bone implant custom-made for a 38-year-old patient with a sarcoma in his tibia. It is the first personalised metamaterial prosthesis of its kind, a technology originally developed for the aerospace sector that reproduces the mechanical properties of bone through a titanium structure manufactured using 3D printing.
Developed together with engineers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), the prosthesis is made up of a network of millimetre-scale titanium structures designed to distribute loads in a similar way to bone tissue. The implant has made it possible to preserve both the patient's leg and knee joint and avoid amputation.
