Not Just a Pretty Face: Three-Dimensional Printed Custom Airway Management Devices

abstract

The Society for Technology in Anesthesia hosted an engineering challenge to use a 3D printer to create a customized oral airway based on a patient's anatomy. We approached this challenge in two parts. First, we identified a model for an oral airway to base our prototype. We then created a 3D rendering of the customizable oral airway and designed a user interface that would accept specific measurements to create a customized oral airway. We then fabricated a 3D model of the patient's airway and surrounding structures using Mimics (Materialise, Leuven, Belgium). We describe the process of designing and producing anatomic models for medical device prototype design. Lastly, we propose a methodology of evaluating medical device prototypes using anatomically accurate models manufactured with 3D printers.