Anyone who ever had to wear a traditional plaster cast during a healing period probably remembers a bulky, heavy and uncomfortable cast wrapped around their skin for weeks or months. Even today’s fiberglass casts can be itchy, trap odors and are difficult to keep clean and dry.
Those days may soon be over, thanks to new technology created by ActivArmor, of Colorado, that creates a removable, waterproof and durable 3-dimensional plastic cast. The casts have been employed at St. Luke’s Orthopedic Care for more than a year.
Last month, St. Luke’s became the first in the nation to use its in-house 3D Print and Innovation Lab to produce ActivArmor casts for upper extremity injuries. The casts are typically covered by medical insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Dr. Dustin Greenhill, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at St. Luke’s Orthopedic Care, has been instrumental in deploying this new technology. “For an active child and their parents, weeks in a cast can feel like months,” he said. “I want them out of a traditional cast as soon as possible, but also need to protect the arm when kids go back to being kids. This cast lets me do both.”
With this technology, Greenhill said, “we can now get these 3D casts on kids fast – both for stable fractures that simply need to heal and, more recently, unstable injuries. For preadolescents and adolescents with a severe wrist or forearm fracture, I’m now doing their 3D scan during surgery.”
To make the cast, a 3D scan is made of the affected appendage and the image would be sent to ActivArmor using proprietary software. Now, the St. Luke’s 3D Print and Innovation Lab will have the capacity to create two, “clamshell-like” halves of the cast, which are then fitted onto the patient’s affected body part. It can be locked on like a cast or removed like a splint to allow swelling of an injured area to subside.
The benefits are abundant: Its lattice-like spacing allows for easier wound care, treatment with advanced healing technologies and skin care and cleaning. The device can be easily sanitized to remove pathogens, even while it is being worn. The 3D cast can also get wet, and it doesn’t impinge on many activities, including sports. And while not clinical in nature, the variety of “fun” colors available makes the cast more appealing to both younger and older patients.
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