Patches the daschund's tumor was so widespread that Dr. Galina Hayes, assistant professor in the Section of Small Animal Surgery at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, in partnership with Dr. Michelle Oblak of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College, could see they needed to carve out more than half of the skull bone. But then they had to decide how to cover the vast gap. A common plate made of titanium mesh would leave too much of Patches’s brain vulnerable to being compressed if it were hit by something.

“And that would be the end of Patches,” said Hayes.

While there are off-the-shelf implants, custom-made 3-D implants are particularly good for dogs, said Oblak, because their skulls vary in shape, from the flat snouts of boxers to the long ones of greyhounds.

So the veterinarians settled on a custom 3-D printed titanium implant.

Read the full story about Hayes' work on Patches in this piece by the New York Times.