IN THE NEWS
A team of students from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, has designed a new type of prosthetic leg for Lucas Resch, a 5-year-old boy who was born with proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD). The leg uses a gearbox design that enables the prosthesis to move like a real leg. Resch was born with only a fraction of his left femur, making his left leg far shorter than his right. Conventional prostheses do not give Resch the ability to run and ride a bicycle or play like his friends do, and his parents have been searching for ways to allow him to attain that level of activity as he grows without the need for to rotationplasty surgery. The new prosthesis, created by a team of Purdue mechanical and biomedical engineering students, uses a gearbox to produce a knee’s range of motion; whereas an ankle joint swivels about 40 degrees, a knee joint moves about 90 degrees. The new design hinges on the innovative gearbox that converts the ankle’s limited movement to the motion of a knee, providing greater mobility. The Purdue students created a mold of Resch’s shin to make a better fit, and he and his family will return later this year to receive the form-fitted leg. The leg will be adjusted as Resch grows.
Photo: Resch family
University Students Design Prosthesis for Child With PFFD
A team of Purdue students has designed a new type of prosthetic leg for 5-year-old Lucas Resch, who has a rare birth defect that makes his left leg far shorter than his right. At left are conventional prosthetics, which do not give Lucas the ability to run and ride a bicycle or play like his friends. The new prosthetic leg, not shown, uses an innovative gearbox design that enables the prosthetic to move more like a real leg.
Researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) are developing an oxygen gel that can be injected into wounded muscles to sustain tissue and limbs. The research is part of the federally funded Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Wake Forest is a co-leader of the $300 million program, which involves 34 universities and is tasked with changing the way wounded soldiers are treated on the battlefield. The gel would be injected into the muscle, providing a water-based source of oxygen. The idea is to apply the gel to open wounds on the battlefield and save limbs, and maybe even lives, because it buys the soldier crucial time keeping tissue alive until surgery.
Photo: www.wakehealth.edu/WFIRM/
Muscle Regeneration Therapy May Prevent Amputations One of the overarching goals of the federal program is to identify ways to repair massive muscle loss injuries, according to Dr. George Christ, lead researcher on the project. “The same way you exercise in a gym, we exercise these [muscles] in a laboratory,” he explains. In addition to battlefield protocols, some of the WFIRM research will have far-reaching applications. Christ hopes to use the muscle implant therapy in a clinical trial on young patients with cleft lips. Several years down the road, the ultimate goal is to regenerate human limbs.
JANUARY 2013 O&P Almanac
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