An 83 year-old woman Belgian woman has become the first-ever person to receive a transplant jawbone tailor-made for her face using a 3D printer.

An 83 year-old Belgian woman has become the first-ever person to receive a transplant jawbone tailor-made for her face using a .

The transplant operation, carried out in June in the Netherlands, was necessary after the woman developed a chronic bone infection in her lower jaw, according to a BBC News report. Because of her age, reconstructive surgery would have been a risky undertaking, so doctors instead opted for the new technology.

The titanium implant was built by LayerWise, a 3D printing firm in Leuven, Belgium that specializes in titanium dental and bone implants. A 3D printer heated and fused tiny titanium particles together, layer-by-layer, to re-create the shape of the woman's jaw. Printing the implant took just a few hours.

The operation to attach the synthetic jawbone took just four hours, about a fifth of the time required for traditional reconstructive surgery. Shortly after waking up from the operation, the woman could speak. A day later, she could swallow again.

Her new jaw weighs in at 107 grams, which is a third heavier than before. Doctors say she should not have a problem getting used to it, however.

Those behind the operation say it was the first of its kind. "The new treatment is a world premiere because it concerns the first patient-specific implant in replacement of the entire lower jaw," Jules Poukens from Hasselt University in Belgium, who led the surgical team, told BBC News.

Experts say the operation might open the door for the use of more 3D-printed specific transplant parts.

"The advantages are that the surgery time decreases because the implants perfectly fit the patients and hospitalization time also lowers - all reducing medical costs," Ruben Wauthle, LayerWise's medical applications engineer, told the BBC."You can build parts that you can't create using any other technique. For example you can print porous titanium structures which allow bone in-growth and allow a better fixation of the implant, giving it a longer lifetime."

3D printers can be used to build physical objects from scratch  or rather, from a 3D file  out of variety of materials, including plastic, metal, ceramic, or glass and even foodstuffs like cheese, icing, and chocolate. The material is laid down, layer by layer, to form the physical item.

Last month, a new category of downloads called "physibles," or data files that deliver real, physical objects to anyone with a 3D printer.

For more, see and the "3D Printing: What You Need to Know" slideshow below.