Case Study: Asan Medical Center achieves higher surgical precision and lower costs with Stratasys 3D printing

3D printing brings hope to an aging society

Asan Medical Center, Korea’s largest medical institution, faced the challenge of improving surgical planning and outcomes for an aging population with complex cases like kidney and breast cancer where CT/MRI alone weren’t sufficiently tangible. To address the need for precision, the center adopted 3D printing technology from Stratasys, including the Connex3 system for soft, transparent organ models and Stratasys FDM for sturdy, patient-specific surgical guides.

Stratasys’ solutions enabled surgeons to perform mock operations on lifelike, transparent kidney models to visualize vessels and tumors, and to use custom FDM-printed guides for accurate, less painful breast tumor localization. The result was faster, more precise surgeries, better preservation of normal tissue, reduced revision and relapse rates, and official recognition when Asan’s 3D printing work was designated a “new medical technology” by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Asan Medical Center

Kim Nam-guk

Department of Convergence Medicine