Biomechanical aspects of preoperative planning of skull correction in children with craniosynostosis.

Craniosynostosis is a birth defect that causes one or more sutures on a baby's head to close earlier than normal. In effect the growing brain determines an abnormal skull shape and, which is more important and more dangerous, it causes an elevated intracranial pressure. The only treatment for children with craniosynostosis is surgical cranioplasty. More extensive procedures yield excellent results, particularly in older children with moderate to severe deformity. However, in children undergoing more extensive reconstructions an essential requirement is blood transfusion. They are also put at risk of complications. In this paper, the authors propose a method of preoperative planning based on three-dimensional modelling and biomechanical investigations. We used Mimics, 3-matic and ANSYS software for the process. The proposed preoperative planning improved the preoperative knowledge of deformation, shortened the time of surgery, and subsequently reduced blood loss during the procedure.