Preventing thermal osteonecrosis through 3D printed ceramic grinding tool

Conventional grinding tools in orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery are solid in structure, leading to a limited amount of coolant that can reach the bone surgery zone, and therefore causing localized high-temperature-induced issues (infection, necrosis, and complications). Additive manufacturing allows the incomparable design and manufacturing freedoms and offers the opportunity to redesign the surgery tool to suppress the grinding temperature within a safe range. Here we present a hollow ceramic grinding tool enabled by additive manufacturing. Our CFD simulation and experiments have proved that, owing to the new design, the coolant can better reach the surgery zone, not only helping to restrict the heat accumulations, but also to remove excessive bone debris. In the in vivo test, we found that, the new design produced less apoptosis and edema area to the rat brain in comparison with the conventional tool. This design minimizes the occurrence of complications such as osteonecrosis due to high surgical temperatures, opening new opportunities for the development of orthopedic surgical tools using additive manufacturing technology.