ABSTRACT
The specialty of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery comprises surgery of the craniofacial composition, ear, nose, throat, neck, and airway. Within this specialty, there are several clinical conditions that lack an ideal treatment. For these challenges, current techniques exhaust the demand and often fall short of the level of precision and customization that are necessary for satisfactory outcomes. Additive manufacturing and bioprinting provide paradigm-shifting potential for treatment options exceeding prior standard therapies.
In this chapter, we describe the current state of clinically challenging conditions that have set the stage for applications of additive manufacturing and bioprinting.
To date, application of additive manufacturing for airway and facial reconstruction can be generally grouped into (1) scaffold-based engineering guiding native tissues, (2) cell-seeded scaffolds, and (3) cell or hydrogel deposition printing.
