According to researchers at University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, three babies with the life-threatening, terminal form of tracheobronchomalacia, are the first in the world to benefit from groundbreaking 3D printed devices that helped keep their airways open, restored their breathing and saved their lives.

Tracheobronchomalacia causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. There was no cure and life-expectancies were grim for the three infants.

Researchers have closely followed their cases to see how well the bioresorable splints implanted in all three patients have worked, publishing the promising results in an issue of Science Translational Medicine.

“These cases broke new ground for us because we were able to use 3D printing to design a device that successfully restored patients’ breathing through a procedure that had never been done before,” says senior author Glenn Green, MD, associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

“Before this procedure, babies with severe tracheobronchomalacia had little chance of surviving. Today, our first patient Kaiba is an active, healthy 3-year-old in preschool with a bright future. The device worked better than we could have ever imagined. We have been able to successfully replicate this procedure and have been watching patients closely to see whether the device is doing what it was intended to do. We found that this treatment continues to prove to be a promising option for children facing this life-threatening condition that has no cure.”

The findings reported today suggest that early treatment of tracheobronchomalacia may prevent complications of conventional treatment such as a tracheostomy, prolonged hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, cardiac and respiratory arrest, food malabsorption and discomfort. None of the devices, which were implanted in then 3-month-old Kaiba, 5-month-old Ian and 16-month-old Garrett have caused any complications.

The findings also show that the patients were able to come off of ventilators and no longer needed paralytics, narcotics and sedation.  Researchers noted improvements in multiple organ systems.  Patients were relieved of immunodeficiency-causing proteins that prevented them from absorbing food so that they no longer needed intravenous therapy.