72-year-old woman with 30-year history of Rheumatoid Arthritis treated with rare custom-made 3D-printed shoulder replacement

In what doctors are calling a rare and highly complex surgery, a 72-year-old woman with a long history of rheumatoid arthritis has received a custom-made, 3D-printed shoulder replacement at Dr. L H Hiranandani Hospital in Powai. The procedure was led by Dr. Aditya Sai Kadavkolan, Senior Consultant in Orthopaedics — and it wasn’t a routine case by any stretch.

Most people are familiar with knee replacements. Shoulder replacements? Not so much. In fact, Dr. Kadavkolan explains that for every 100 knee replacements performed, only about one shoulder replacement is done. The shoulder joint is complicated, and these surgeries are usually handled by specialists who focus specifically on shoulder conditions.

This patient had been living with rheumatoid arthritis for nearly 30 years. The autoimmune disease had slowly damaged multiple joints over time. About ten years ago, she underwent knee replacement surgery. But in the past few years, both her shoulders began to deteriorate badly, leaving her in constant pain and struggling with basic movement.

Her right shoulder was replaced last year and healed well. The left one, however, was a completely different story.

Scans showed that nearly 50 to 60 percent of the bone in her left shoulder had been destroyed. That’s a serious problem because regular shoulder implants need enough healthy bone to hold them in place. In her case, there simply wasn’t enough.

So the team had to think differently.

They began with a high-resolution CT scan to study exactly how much bone remained. Using that data, biomedical engineers created a 3D digital model of her shoulder and designed an implant specifically for her anatomy. First, they made a plastic version to test the fit. Once they were sure it worked, the final implant was printed in titanium.

Dr. Kadavkolan describes it simply: instead of shaping the bone to fit a ready-made implant, they shaped the implant to fit her bone. A tailor-made solution.

This approach helped preserve as much of her remaining bone as possible, which is crucial for stability and long-term recovery. While full mobility can take three to four months with physiotherapy.

Cases like this are still rare in India. But they show how far personalized medicine has come — and how even complex joint damage doesn’t have to mean giving up on movement or living with pain.