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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Customized Fabrication Approach for Hypertrophic

Scar Treatment: 3D Printed Fabric Silicone Composite

Lung Chow , Kit-Lun Yick *, Mei-Ying Kwan , Chun-Fai Yuen , Sun-Pui Ng , Annie Yu , Joanne Yip 1
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1 Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
2 University Research Facility in 3D Printing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
3 Division of Science, Engineering and Health Studies, College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
4 Department of Advanced Fibro Science, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
Abstract: Hypertrophic scars (HS) are considered to be the greatest unmet challenge in wound and burn rehabilitation. The
most common treatment for HS is pressure therapy, but pressure garments may not be able to exert adequate pressure onto HS
due to the complexity of the human body. However, the development of three-dimensional (3D) scanning and direct digital
manufacturing technologies has facilitated the customized placement of additively manufactured silicone gel onto fabric as
a component of the pressure therapy garment. This study provides an introduction on a novel and customized fabrication
approach to treat HS and discusses the mechanical properties of 3D printed fabric reinforced with a silicone composite.
For further demonstration of the suggested HS therapy with customized silicone insert, silicone inserts for the finger webs
and HS were additively manufactured onto the fabric. Through the pressure evaluation by Pliance X system, it proved that
silicone insert increases the pressure exerted to the HS. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the additively manufactured
fabric silicone composites were characterized. The findings suggest that as compared with single viscosity print materials,
the adhesive force of the additively manufactured silicone and fabric showed a remarkable improvement of 600% when print
materials with different viscosities were applied onto elevated fabric.

Keywords: Three-dimensional printing, Soft material, Textile fabric, Pressure therapy, Hypertrophic scars
*Corresponding Author: Kit-Lun Yick, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong;
tcyick@polyu.edu.hk
Received: February 21, 2020; Accepted: April 01, 2020; Published Online: April 24, 2020

Citation: Chow L, Yick KL, Kwan MY, et al., 2020, Customized Fabrication Approach for Hypertrophic Scar Treatment: 3D
Printed Fabric Silicone Composite, Int J Bioprint, 6(2):262. DOI: 10.18063/ijb.v6i2.262.

1 Introduction have created novel applications in clinical research
areas. For example, Zhou et al. had produced
[1]
Additive manufacturing, which is known 3D printed silicone prosthetic noses using DIW
as three-dimensional (3D) printing or rapid and Ahmad Fozi et al. had proposed customized
[2]
prototyping, has been widely adopted in the silicone facial padding for the hypertrophic scar
medical field for fabricating implants, orthoses, (HS) management of burn patients using additive
and prostheses over the past decade. Recently, manufacturing. The prescribed silicone facial
the development of 3D printing of flexible and padding takes into consideration patient specific
stretchable materials using direct ink writing (DIW) anatomic features which can then exert adequate
in which the printer extrudes materials out of nozzles pressure distribution onto the face, thus improving

© 2020 Chow, et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
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