Method of designing and manufacturing external personalized breast prostheses, using 3D printing and low-cost computer-aided technologies

Abstract

External breast prostheses, assistive technologies that seek to help mastectomized women face the asymmetry and recall of excised cancer, are resources ignored by the Brazilian Unified Health System and addressed limitedly in the national industry. Shelf solutions are expensive for patients who need the care of public agencies and affordable products are rudimentary to the point of compromising hygiene. Both are made available to people with medium sizes, so challenged by Ergonomics, and impose on users products which designs are not necessarily based on comfort. The literature review showed that there are countries in which rudimentary external prostheses, made of birdseed, are still as popular as in Brazil, but that there are also personalized, safe and quality resources for those who can afford them. The objective of this work was to develop an economically feasible method that enables the manufacturing process of personalized external breast prostheses, of lower initial cost than the prostheses available on the market, using the support of low-cost technologies as 3D scanning, CAD, CAM, 3D printing and casts, and that at the same time allows superior quality to them. It offers an economically feasible proposal by any non-profit institution. Among the results, the perspectives of twenty mastectomized women on external breast prostheses, the evaluation of rotomolding for the manufacturing process of prostheses, three-dimensional scanning protocols of mastectomized women, three-dimensional mesh treatment for various breast complexions. CAM, 3D printing, 3D printing post-processing and casts applied to the design of external breast prostheses, all with low-cost equipment and software, and an economically feasible method for the production of external breast prostheses, personalized or not, are also presented. There is also the validation of the product "external breast prosthesis", obtained with the method.