Some experience with prosthetic problems of upper-extremity amputees.

THE history of the upper-extremity prosthetics program up to 1954 has been outlined in a previous article in this journal (7). From 1950 to the present, the upper-extremity research group established in the Department of Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, has processed some 300 arm amputees: 72 during the Case Study Program (3), an overlapping 250 during the 12 schools at the Prosthetics Training Center (1), a small group of adult research amputees, and 104 children seen at the Child Amputee Prosthetics Project (4) prior to July 1, 1956. From the adult cases we have selected 23 of special interest to summarize in this article. First presented are five cases that responded well to standard methods, the purpose being to