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Amazon started in someone’s garage. So did Apple. So, it might not be too far fetched to think that’s where the next major medical technology might come from.

That’s the hope of some local doctors using 3D printed heart models to practice delicate surgeries before performing the procedures on some of their most vulnerable patients.

Kami Sutton made her first trip to Seattle Children’s Hospital when she was just four hours old.

In 1988, they didn’t have the technology to detect her severe heart defect in utero. Her parents had no idea their daughter was seriously ill until the day she was born.

“They told my mom and dad I probably wouldn’t survive the trip from Everett to Seattle,” says Kami. “I didn’t have any way to breathe on my own. I was blue as soon as I was born.”

Pediatricians were able to stabilize Kami enough to get her to Seattle Children’s and into surgery. The exploratory procedure discovered a very complicated series of issues with her tiny heart.

“My ventricles and the pumping chambers of my heart are switched. My heart’s on the right side instead of the left. I had a hole between the ventricles in my heart. And I was born without the pulmonary valve or artery, which is the connection between the heart and the lungs,” explains Kami.

She underwent heart surgery before she was even a day old, and she’s had to endure another 18 surgeries in the years since.

Now, at 26, Kami’s about to undergo her twentieth procedure. This time, at the University of Washington Medical Center, Dr. Stephen Seslar will replace a pacemaker that isn’t doing enough to support Kami’s unique heart.

“There’s only electricity going to one side of my heart and traveling to the other side, so there’s a delayed reaction,” she says.

The doctor hopes to get the ventricles to beat in sync by placing a lead wire on each side of her heart.

“But because of my complex anatomy, he said that was going to be difficult to get the lead wire to the other side,” says Kami.

Kami educated herself on her condition and on all the research surrounding congenital heart defects. She knew Seslar had been dabbling in the use of 3D printing to create simulations of average human hearts to teach new surgeons.

During their first meeting, she asked Seslar whether he might be able to print a copy of her complex heart to practice the difficult procedure before putting her on the operating table.

“His eyes got really wide, and he got really excited,” remembers Kami. “He said he hadn’t thought of that for my case, yet, but that could be a great possibility.”

Seslar and his team got to work right away. They contacted Dr. Tom Burke, a local Materials Engineer who has been dabbling in 3D printing for medical applications.

With his own printer setup in his garage, Burke has been testing different materials to build different types of human tissue.

Using Catscans and MRI’s of Kami’s heart, Burke was able to create a replica that he sent to the lab at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

It has the strength, the elasticity and the lubricity needed to realistically recreate the delicate procedure.

For the first time, the surgeons have a heart that’s not only able to give them accurate feedback during a procedure, but is created to be identical to this patient’s unique anatomy. Seslar and Dr. Kristen Patton have now gone through three trial runs.

“We have certainly found a lot of things that don’t work,” says Seslar.

“Which is really useful,” adds Patton. “It’s much better to figure that out on the model with our time, than it is Kami’s under anesthesia time.”

Now, they think they are ready for the real thing. They’ve got a plan to get the lead wires into just the right places on Kami’s heart. They also have a backup plan, just in case.

They’ve also had the opportunity to try several different models of each medical component to find just the right fit for Kami. In the long run, Seslar and Patton say it could save the patient time under anesthesia and could save insurance companies a lot of money.

It also helps Kami feel more confident that she’ll have a successful procedure, giving her hope for the future treatment of other children born with one-of-a-kind hearts.