3D Printed Implanted Biventricular Pacemaker for Informed Patient Consent : The Creation of a Visual Aid Bisected Heart and Pacemaker Model

Abstract

Informed consent is a fundamental aspect of patient care that is often difficult to achieve; practitioners have the responsibility to their patients to describe in accessible ways the benefits, risks, and overall process behind each considerable treatment option. For procedures such as pacemaker implantation, also known as a cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) device, verbal explanation alone to describe the procedure is difficult to follow. The purpose of this project is to provide a visual and physical aid tool to improve patient understanding and thus inform patient consent for a CRT implantation procedure. The educational model will be made using the CT scan data of a biventricular pacemaker patient to derive a printable 3D model. The tissue and implanted CRT artifacts of interest will be segmented using Materialize Mimics software. Once isolated, this model will be refined within the Materialize 3-Matic software for 3D printing compatibility before being imported into slicing software and printed. The ideal output of this project will be a full-sized heart model with distinguishable pacemaker lead artifacts; the model will be available both as a full model as the heart appears within the patient, and a bisected split of the heart to better show the lead placement of a pacemaker. The model should be clearly understandable for patients of variable backgrounds.