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Lundi 30 Avril 2019
The three-dimensional print, unveiled today at the annual SXSW conference, is essentially a womb for a human baby. It's shaped like a 3D printed fetus. It's a creation by Maciej Pietrzak, head of 3D modeling at Prontera, a San Francisco firm that's been working with cancer research, specifically to try and improve the accuracy of doctors' predictions. He hopes to sell the model, in pieces, as a 3D-printed prosthesis for expectant mothers.
"We thought of creating a'model' for hospitals to use in order to train medical students to recognize vaginal deformities," Pietrzak told Business Insider. "The fetus contains basically all the anatomical structures that one may find in a normal vagina."
Prontera's model is a lab-grown version of a fetus. It's made from a polymer called thermoplastics and, like any lab-grown fetus, is not yet alive. It contains a removable cervix and uterus.
"The womb-like shape of this item is intentional to visualize the uterus and cervix of the normal human body," Pietrzak says. "We believe it will inspire compassion and empathy in doctors and medical students, as well as raising discussion on society's expectations for women and their bodies."
A 3D-printed womb, as it stands, is still not a replacement for actual human babies. It's merely a mock-up of a baby in utero. It would be very easy for a medical professional to spot if a woman really was carrying a normal, healthy fetus or if she was being fitted with an artificial womb, and it's something the makers of this model hope to prevent.
Prontera is one of many companies looking into whether 3D-printed prosthetics and implants can help address a problem that's both personal and global in scope: premature births. In the US alone, nearly 4,000 women give birth every day before 37 weeks, the point at which most doctors and the Centers for Disease Control recommend the risk of death is high for the babies. Worldwide, this number is more than double that, with almost 10 million babies born before 37 weeks. It's a problem that's been compounded by the introduction of fertility treatments, which have cut the number of women who become pregnant in the first place.
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