European Hospitals 3D Print Brain Implants In-House Now

European neurosurgery departments are ditching outside 3D printing providers and bringing the process inside their own hospitals. A new study from University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and the German Armed Forces tracked this shift across two surveys, five years apart, and the results show how quickly medical 3D printing has matured.

The shift to in-house printing

In 2020, none of the surveyed neurosurgeons reported running their own 3D printers. By 2025, more than one in five said their department handled 3D printing directly. Engineer involvement also jumped from just over 1% to nearly 19%. At the same time, reliance on external printing companies dropped from 22% to zero among the 2025 respondents.

That is not a gradual trend. That is a wholesale move toward institutional control. Most departments that added 3D printing capacity set up dedicated centralized labs after 2020. Those labs became the primary resource for surgical planning models, resident training tools, and patient-specific implants.

From models to actual implants

Surgeons have long used 3D printed anatomical models to plan tricky operations. But the survey found a new use case emerging: implant fabrication. In 2020, no respondents reported printing actual implants. In 2025, 27.58% did. That is a meaningful jump, because printing something you plan to put inside a patient carries stricter requirements for accuracy, biocompatibility, and quality control.

The study authors note that as departments expand from visualization models to clinical implants, they will need formal quality management procedures and regulatory compliance. Many respondents already flagged this as a gap. Several clinicians admitted they did not know which printing technology or software their department was using. That suggests expertise is still concentrated in small specialist teams even as equipment becomes more common.

Which technologies are winning

Fused deposition modeling remained the most widely used method in both surveys. But the 2025 responses showed growing interest in selective laser sintering, selective laser melting, and multi-jet modeling. Those technologies can produce stronger, more detailed parts than basic FDM, and they signal that some departments are moving beyond prototyping into production-grade applications.

Why this matters

The findings matter because they show 3D printing is no longer an experimental sideline in European neurosurgery. It is becoming part of routine clinical workflow. Surgeons in neuro-oncology, skull-base surgery, spine surgery, and vascular procedures all identified 3D printing as having considerable potential. As in-house capability grows, hospitals can produce patient-specific devices faster and cheaper than ordering from an outside service. That is especially valuable for complex cases where waiting days for an external model or implant is not an option.

The full study was published in the International Journal of Bioprinting. The data spans 172 completed questionnaires from neurosurgical departments across Europe and the German Armed Forces between 2020 and 2025.