Instrumented Devices

Research Theme: Wearable Devices for Pervasive Healthcare

Instrumented Forearm Crutches for Lower Limb Rehabilitation

Forearm crutches are frequently used in the rehabilitation of an injury to the lower limb, by enabling the patient to reduce or remove weight-bearing on the affected limb. Both excessive loading and unloading of the limb can slow healing or cause further damage, suggesting a need for a program of graduated weight-bearing and activity. Therefore, a patient is instructed by their physiotherapist to apply a certain fraction of their body weight through the crutch axis as they walk. Instructing patients on partial weight-bearing is a difficult task for the physiotherapist as there are currently few objective means of measuring how much weight is going through the affected lower limb. A patient's perception of the loading on their leg is often prone to considerable error and clinicians can give only subjective feedback as a result of visual inspection.

This research received a fantastic amount of press coverage and public interest. A selection of the online coverage that it received (at least that which I have spotted!) is listed below:

BBC News Website
BBC South Today [Video] (Local BBC news for the South of England)
The Daily Mail (British tabloid newpaper)
The Southern Daily Echo (Local newspaper)
'Frontline' Magazine (The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's magazine)
British Satellite News [Video] (Free international television news service covering British news)
London Press Service (Reporting on latest developments in UK industry, science and technology)
The British Council (The UK's international cultural relations body)
UK Foundation for Assistive Technology (FAST) (National strategic body on assistive technologies)
The Wessex Scene (Southampton's student newspaper)
The Engineer (UK engineering magazine)
OandP.com (Online resource for information on prosthetics and orthotics)
medGadget (Independent internet journal of emerging medical technologies)

Project webpage on the ECS website: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/projects/705

Related Publications

Number of items: 2.

Merrett, G., Ettabib, M., Peters, C., Hallett, G. and White, N. (2010) Augmenting Forearm Crutches with Wireless Sensors for Lower Limb Rehabilitation. Measurement Science and Technology, 21 (12).

Merrett, G. V., Peters, C., Hallett, G. and White, N. M. (2009) An Instrumented Crutch for Monitoring Patients' Weight Distribution during Orthopaedic Rehabilitation. In: Eurosensors XXIII, 06-09 September 2009, Lausanne, Switzerland.

This list was generated on Thu Feb 23 00:59:33 2012 GMT.

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