Florida zoo saves cancer-stricken bird’s life with 3D-printed beak implant

TAMPA, Fla. — A cancer-stricken bird has a new lease on life, thanks to a team of experts at ZooTampa.

Caregivers at the zoo said they noticed a lesion on the upper beak of Crescent, a 25-year-old great hornbill.

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The zoo’s veterinarians said they suspected it might be squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer in humans that’s usually deadly in hornbills.

ZooTampa veterinarians said they worked with hospital physicians, biomedical engineers and veterinary specialists from two universities to surgically remove the tumor and replace it with a custom-designed, 3D-printed prosthetic.

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“We asked ourselves, if this was a human, what would we do? So we began to plan how to fix Crescent’s casque using the technology we use every day on our human patients — 3D printing,” said Summer Decker, Ph.D., associate professor, vice chair for Research and Innovation, and director of the 3D Clinical Applications Division for the Department of Radiology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Tampa General Hospital.

Zoo officials said the experts all volunteered their expertise for the surgery, the first of its kind on a hornbill in the U.S. and just the second in the world.

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