Doctors at a hospital in Orlando say 3D printing technology is helping them fix congenital disabilities in babies that haven’t even been born yet.

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The new technology allows doctors to print a life-size model of the fetus they plan to operate on, giving them a new way to plan ahead of surgery.

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“This technology actually makes the surgery safer and more informative for the parents prior to surgery and helps me as a surgeon perform the surgery safer and be more effective and quicker,” said Dr. Samer Elbabaa, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Orlando Health. The new technology proved crucial for Jocelyn Rodriguez, who has wanted to have children since meeting her husband. “Ever since the first day we started dating, we were talking about kids,” Rodriguez said. But 18 weeks into her pregnancy, Rodriguez was told her child would be born with spina bifida — a congenital condition where a baby’s spine and spinal cord don’t properly form. “Neither one of us really knew what spina bifida was until we were diagnosed with it,” Rodriguez said. Doctors recommended that Rodriguez undergo […]

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