My name is Laura Weibel, I am 19 years old.
Before this accident, I had just graduated from a scientific high school
and I was enrolled in medical school.
Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to be a dentist,
I wanted to work in the dental field.
The Romans Ferrari Center
is a pediatric rehabilitation center that treats traumatized children.
We treat several traumas: brain injuries, brain tumors,
polytraumas, and children with severe burns.
Our first priority is to welcome the patient into the center
as early as possible to avoid scarring complications.
The main complications are the retractions of the scars
and hypertrophies, which means the increase in volume
and the development of thick, fibrous scars.
We used to make all our masks
from plaster casts. So the orthoprosthetists would make
a negative with plaster strips from which they created the positive,
which they used to thermoform the mask. This required the patients
to stay motionless during the casting process, which can be difficult,
especially for children, and it could reactivate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
because the straps are a little warm and it is sometimes unpleasant
for the patients to experience heat on their face.
At the core of innovation, there is the improvement of care.
If we really want to provide better treatment to patients,
we have to ask ourselves: Are we currently doing the right thing?
What can we do better?
That's what innovation is all about: finding new ways to do better.
The idea was to avoid skin contact,
to mold a mask without contact in order not to hurt the patient.
3D printing was something we had been dreaming of for quite some time.
We had imagined that a 3D printer
would allow us to produce a mask based on the scanned file
without ever having to touch the patient.
In order to do that, we had to do some research on the topic.
It was then that Mr. Veauville arrived with an engineering perspective
and said, "We have to put this in the hands of the engineers."
We gave engineering students of Centrale Lyon a study to complete.
Would it be possible to use 3D printing to make a mask?
They were asked to explore all existing 3D printing technologies
with an objective to evaluate the quality, time, and cost of each.
After the evaluations, we ended up with the technology
of selective laser sintering (SLS)
which allowed us to produce this type of positive mold.
Our main challenge was understanding what the practitioners were expressing
and helping them transform a medical problem,
expressed in medical words, into a technical solution.
This has always been the biggest hurdle
since we have different lexicons.
It is important to highlight that for an institution like ours,
any development of this type is not compensated by the health agency.
We could only work on this initiative thanks to donations.
So this meant that we had a limited budget
and we needed a solution that could fit into this budget
We were lucky to find that the Formlabs machine
which was recommended to us, was affordable within our means.
Introducing the new workflow with the 3D printer
provided several benefits for the patients.
First, it's much faster.
Plaster casts take about half an hour,
but scanning only takes a few moments
It's also more comfortable for the patients because
they don't have warm straps on their face.
Our results with 3D printing have always been satisfactory.
The area where our team needed to work together as a team was in training
the orthoprosthetists on how to place the DMDG (specialized relief) devices
with sufficient precision, because the masks that we make make are not
classic compressive appliances such as the ones that can be found
in other places where they treat burn victims.
There are additions, most of the time
made out of silicone, which have reliefs that allow for
a more targeted and effective compression on the scars.
At first it's weird,
it's not very pleasant, you want to take it off,
it's a little bit itchy, but then you get used to it and now
whenever I don't have it on, it almost pulls me.
So I even prefer to have the mask on now.
I feel that it has an effect on my skin and I can really see
the difference because a year ago, my skin was not like this at all,
it was much more red and puffy.
So yes, I feel like the mask has positive effects.
I've been wearing it every day for over a year now.
Since we integrated 3D printing just about a year ago,
we've already produced more than a hundred masks.
We are able to produce compressive devices
that we couldn't make using any kind of traditional means.
Our fitters have mastered the tool and the process,
and are now producing these devices whenever they’re necessary.
Even complicated ones, such as compressive devices for the tiny hands of kids.
The big challenge is to make this solution more widely known,
as the center is already providing care
to about 25% of severely burned children in France.
By further developing this process,
we'll be able to share our knowledge and treat patients
who are far away from us.
We've just done exactly this for a patient based in Jordan.
We collaborated with Doctors Without Borders who scanned the face of the patient,
then sent the file to us and we were able to create
a custom made mask, which are designed
exclusively by Romans Ferrari,
and then sent it to the patient.
Based on this experience, our goal is to make this process more widespread
so that all patients can benefit from the new technique,
because, in fact, the techniques and the appliances that we make are
unique and much more efficient than the ones used in other centers.
I am very happy to be here
because it has a real family atmosphere, everybody knows each other.
We have to learn how to go out again, because burn victims have to wear
a mask and compression devices, which makes it difficult
to go out without worrying about how other people look at you.
We learn how to be part of the society again,
and how to live more normally.
I wish people would be more aware of burn victims
so that in the street,
they would not look at us in a strange way and ask: "What's wrong with her?"
"Why is she wearing a mask?"
I would like it to be a little
more known to the public.
Currently, I attend the school here at the center
and study science subjects to keep up,
as next September I am supposed to go back to school.
My place is still reserved in medical school.
I will be out soon, after fourteen months,
which is quite long,
but it is a very good center
and I've been very well taken care of. The staff was very caring
and we really bonded. There are also patients
with whom I get along very well, and I know that we will be friends for life.