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0 viewsThe Dutch medical company Xilloc, started by 27 year old Dutch entrepreneur Maikel Beerens, has created a groundbreaking patient-specific implant that looks set to change the lives of thousands of patients suffering from severe head injuries and subsequent skull defects.
To break it down for the man on the street, Beerens explains the functions and benefits of his product by telling the story of a patient he simply calls Mark:
Mark had a near fatal bicycle accident in 2004. The force of the impact caused Mark’s brain to start swelling, as an ankle might swell after landing heavily on it. In such cases, as Beerens explains, due to the surrounding bone of the skull there is no room for the brain to keep swelling and it can become seriously damaged as a result. Surgeons therefore remove a piece or pieces of bone from either side of the skull to allow the brain to expand unconstrained.
An incision is then made in the patient’s belly cavity and the removed plate or plates are placed inside to try to preserve them until they can be put back to their original position. With bone having been separated from the body for between one and six months, Beerens says that in 70% of cases the body no longer accepts the bone when it is put back into the skull and breaks it down, often leaving patients with noticeable deformity, the shape of their head no longer held by the bone beneath the outer flesh.
This is the situation that Mark found himself in, and he is not alone – Beerens says that there are at least 2,000 patients like Mark in Europe alone. Whilst some cases have been treated in the past by surgeons directly covering over the gaps with a claylike substance, this cannot match the original specifics of each individual patient’s skull and is not “aesthetically pleasing”, often resulting in what Beerens calls a “moon landscape effect”.
But after writing a thesis on patient-specific implants for his Masters degree in Medical Device Engineering, and a subsequent two and a half years of working “non-stop, 24/7”, Beerens’ first start up, Xilloc, is now giving patients the world over the chance to have revolutionary new patient-specific implants that are “safe, aesthetically superior and a perfect fit”.
Made from titanium or a polymer material called PEEK, each individually manufactured implant is based on what Beerens calls the “recipe of the surgeon” along with “skull databases” which give Xilloc all the information they need to completely reconstruct and print, with a 3-D printer, an exact replica of the particular patient’s skull. Accordingly, they are then able to make the required patient-specific implant. Using the same technology, earlier this year Xilloc also completed work on the world’s first 3-D printed total mandibular (jaw) replacement implant.
Recent pictures of Mark, who actually had plates of bone removed on both sides of his skull, show that the shape of one side of his head has been returned to its original form thanks to a Xilloc implant, whilst the other side, still containing a non-specific claylike implant, remains noticeably misshapen.
Aside from safety and aesthetics, the other advantage of Xilloc’s implants is that, thanks to their detailed specificity and the durable nature of the material, they minimise the amount of time and money spent on repeated surgery and trial and error to try to repair the skull after the bone has been removed in the first instance. Whilst Mark had to undergo heavy surgery four times over a period of six years, if Xilloc had been there from the beginning Beerens says that Mark would instead only have had two operations over a period of just three to six months.
“If I see what a difference we can make in the lives of people like Mark, then for me it’s a moral obligation to do so,” says Beerens.
After officially launching Xilloc nine months ago, Beerens and his small team are currently starting to expand sales both at home in Maastricht and abroad. Beerens’ researchers have identified Africa, including South Africa, as a primary area for potential customers.
Having recently spent time in Cape Town for the latest Power of Youth summit, which brings together what he calls “a group of young entrepreneurs who are crazy enough to think they can change the world”, Beerens was then heading on to Johannesburg and Durban for meetings with surgeons and prospective customers.
Beerens says that his time in the Mother City was the closest he has come to a holiday since he started working on Xilloc almost three years ago. “Friends of mine who are not entrepreneurs really don’t get why I spend some weeks working every day until five in the morning,” he goes on to say, “but it never feels like work – that’s the freedom of entrepreneurship, because I’m creating what I want to create, I’m doing exactly what I want to do and that’s something beautiful”
(From top to bottom)
Images 1 and 2: ‘Mark’ after and before Xilloc’s implants
Images 3, 4 and 5: the world’s first 3-D printed ‘mandibular’ replacement implant
Image 6: Xilloc logo
Image 7: Xilloc founder, 27 year old Maikel Beerens with a demo skull implant