Print
Bookmark and Share
E-mail

Electrified Hands 

lizzpeterson

 

There are only two weeks of school left, and the cool stuff just keeps coming!  Today we learned about myoelectric controlled prostheses.  We had already made sockets for our patients, but hadn’t designated a location on the socket for the electrodes.  Before the patients came to school, however, we got to play with the Otto Bock myoelectric ‘toys’ ourselves.

 

We had to find the perfect electrode sites on the extensor and flexor muscle bellies of our forearms (some were easier than others), then the real fun began.  There are simulators on the Otto Bock software to test the user on their functional ability.  One of the simulators asks the user to flex/extend their forearm to move a car through a maze of walls.  Sounds easy, but it’s not.  Especially if ones forearm muscles aren’t accustomed to flexing repeated for three continuous minutes!

 

After playing with the games, we connected the electrodes to a prosthetic hand.  We programmed the hands to different settings and learned what muscle motions opened and closed the hands.  Now we were ready for our patients.

 

The patient model we worked with had a very short transradial amputation.  She also doesn’t usually wear a prosthesis.  Finding electrode sites that produced the right signal was a challenge, then trying to train the patient how to flex her muscles was a bigger challenge!  We had her use her sound side as a reference and try to mimic it with her limb deficient side.  We also attached the prosthetic hand to the electrodes so our patient model could get a better visual of what we wanted the hand to do. It was much easier for her to look at the hand than the signal data crawling across a computer screen.  After awhile, she got the hang of it, however we were still fishing around for the perfect electrode sites!

 

We finally determined that only one site was going to work, but it was going to work great.  We taped a forearm frame to her socket, attached the electrodes and crossed our fingers that everything would still work when she put the prosthesis back on.  Sure enough, it did! Our patient model was excited; my partners and I were excited; everyone was excited!  What we thought was going to be a very long and complicated day actually turned out pretty fun. Yeah for upper extremity prosthetics



Bookmark and Share

Comments

Gersdegec : re: Electrified Hands commented on Sunday, May 12, 2019 10:47:00 PM
Gersdegec : re: Electrified Hands commented on Sunday, May 12, 2019 10:46:29 PM
https://telstraeduaustralia.com/au-edusson-com-review ASDFASDF
Gersdegec : re: Electrified Hands commented on Sunday, May 12, 2019 10:43:47 PM
In this modern time you saw many progress. You saw most progress in the field in of technology, Here we show you our new invention of electrified hands we are testing it here on https://www.toptenwritingservices.com/unemployedprofessors-com-review/. After get success in it i can saw it in the market in very reasonable price.

Add Your Comment

Please sign in to post a comment about this article.
Follow 360oandp.com on:
U.S. Orthotics
POINT Health Centers of America
OSSUR
WCBL
Bulldog Tools

ᅵ 2009 360 O&P, All Rights Reserved Home | About us | Content Advisory Board | FAQ | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | My Account | Contact Us