Design and Development of a Patient-specific surgical guide for free fibula flap surgery

Ahstract- A conventional approach for mandibular reconstruction is the fibular free flap. The surgical procedure's accuracy, on the other hand, is largely determined by each surgeon's experience. Extra bone loss, longer operative times, and excessive blood loss are only a few of the major concerns with the surgery. We present a step-by-step design of a patient-specific 3D printed surgical guide in this paper, which will aid in effective clinical outcomes by improving surgical accuracy, providing exact cuts, decreasing fixation complications, and reducing the operative time. The DICOM information of a male patient with a left mandibular tumor were used in this study. The surgical guides and models for the mandible and fibula were developed using free CAD/CAM software and successfully 3-D printed on an FDM printer. We were able to build surgical guides and undertake virtual simulations of mandibular repair utilizing fibular bone fragments before the actual surgery, which have given high reconstructive accuracy. The guided surgery was carried out successfully. The guides fit on both the mandible and the fibula were determined to be extremely precise and accurate. The use of 3-D printed surgical guides helped to ease the mandibular reconstruction procedure.