Printing your skull: How 3D printing helps surgeons plan complex encephalocele brain surgeries

At five months’ gestation, Bentley Yoder was given little chance to live. A routine 20-week “gender reveal” ultrasound showed that a large portion of his brain was growing outside of his skull, a malformation known as an encephalocele. But he was moving and kicking and had a strong heartbeat, so his parents, Sierra and Dustin, carried on with the pregnancy.

Born through a normal vaginal delivery (the doctors felt that a C-section would interfere with Sierra’s grieving process), Bentley surprised everyone by thriving and meeting most of his baby milestones.

But the large protuberance on his head was holding him back. It steadily got larger, filling with cerebrospinal fluid. Bentley couldn’t hold his head up for more than a few seconds.

He went from hospital to hospital in his home state of Ohio. The neurosurgeon at the regional children’s hospital was confident he could remove the encephalocele, believing it to be damaged, nonfunctional tissue. But his parents suspected that Bentley might actually be using that displaced tissue.

A second opinion

Neurosurgeon Violette Recinos, MD, at the Cleveland Clinic agreed. She offered to operate, but also told the Yoders that she knew surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital who were very experienced with encephaloceles.

That jived with the Yoders’ online research. They traveled to Boston, where plastic surgeon John Meara, MD, and neurosurgeon Mark Proctor, MD, in Boston Children’s Craniofacial Program outlined how they would approach Bentley’s case. Rather than cut the encephalocele off, they would drain the fluid and ease the brain tissue back into Bentley’s skull.

Read the full post on Vector: 3D-printed models assist complex brain surgery for encephalocele

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