Evaluation of the effects of personalized 3D-printed jig plate–assisted puncture in trigeminal balloon compression

Abstract

Objective

Percutaneous microballoon compression (PMC) is a simple and effective surgical procedure for the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. The difficulty with this surgery is related to accurate and quick foramen ovale puncture. In this study, we compared the application of personalized 3D-printed guides and the traditional puncture method in trigeminal PMC surgery.

Method

Data from 40 patients with primary trigeminal neuralgia treated with PMC between June 2017 and August 2019 were analyzed retrospectively. Personalized 3D-printed jigs were used to assist foramen ovale puncture in 20 patients, and Hartel positioning was used for puncture in 20 patients. Three-dimensional reconstruction was performed preoperatively using 3DSlicer software to understand the size of the foramen ovale and positioning of related anatomical structures. Based on the reconstruction, personalized surgical paths were created for the jig plate–assisted treatment group, and the printed jig plate was applied to the surgery through 3D printing to explore the surgical effect.

Results

Foramen ovale puncture was successful in all patients. Better results were achieved with guides than with the traditional method in terms of the foramen ovale puncture time (p < 0.01), total operation time (p < 0.01), and number of computed tomography scans (p < 0.01). The efficacy of surgery and postoperative complications did not differ between groups (p = 1).

Conclusions

The use of personalized 3D-printed guides enables accurate puncture positioning in PMC, and improves the success rate of surgery, shortens the operation time, and reduces surgical risk, which has broad prospects in clinical application.

Keywords:

• Personalized 3D-printed guide
• 3DSlicer software
• trigeminal neuralgia
• balloon compression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Jiangmen Science and Technology Planning Project, China (Grant No 2018630100110019805).