With the increasing number of trauma injuries from around the world, doctors are trying to create a new generation of medical techniques and devices. An injury one may have died for in a previous era, can survive now, but still we have not conquered it all. A very vital part of this study is the bone graft: where you take the bone from another source and fill in the gaps where the bone has been damaged. However there are many drawbacks to this, due to the reason that it will just not mitigate for a natural bone.

But an innovated new method may open a new door to this study of artificial bones, it uses something many people already have in their homes: an inkjet printer. Obviously it is not a regular printer, or otherwise we may have door to door surgeons. It is much heavier and larger. But the basic idea is the same. Scientists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada are trying to use their printers to make replicas of damaged bones by literally “printing” them out, layer by layer.

The “paper” in this special printer is a thin layer of cement-like powder. The inkjet sprays the cement with an acid that reacts with it and turns hard. That would be one layer. Then the new layers are placed on top and layers build up until they get the shape they need.

The entire printing only takes around 10 minutes. The advantages this has over grafts and artificial inserts are that, the compound in the printer are the same compounds found in human bones. This “printed” bones can basically mingle in with the body and take a place of a natural bone.

It may take years before this type of technology will come in hospitals, but the important thing to take in notice is that humans have accomplished a whole lot and this may be a significant mark in our history.