1 Staff Engineer, Committee on Prosthetics Research and Development, National Research Council—National Academy of Sciences. This paper is a revision of Report E-4, which was prepared on behalf of the Subcommittee on Evaluation, CPRD. The study was supported by Contract SRS-71-8 between the Social and Rehabilitation Service and the National Academy of Sciences. During the past few years, severa...

Occlusal splints, also known as bite guards, oral orthotics, and oral appliances, are utilized frequently in dental practices. They are commonly used to relax jaw muscles, prevent temporomandibular jaw trauma, protect dentition, and control headaches. How well occlusal splints work is another matter. Numerous studies, when taken as a whole, suggest only a modest indication that they are useful....

Commercial lower limb prostheses or orthotics help patients achieve a normal life. However, patients who use such aids need prolonged training to achieve a normal gait, and their fatigability increases. To improve patient comfort, this study proposed a method of predicting gait angle using neural networks and EMG signals. Experimental results using our method show that the absolute average erro...

A 15-year-old female soccer player presented with chronic plantar fasciitis. She was treated with acetic acid iontophoresis and a combination of rehabilitation protocols, ultrasound, athletic taping, custom orthotics and soft tissue therapies with symptom resolution and return to full activities within a period of 6 weeks. She reported no significant return of symptoms post follow-up at 2 month...

Characterization of the residual limbs and limb segments of patients for prosthesis and orthosis design has principally been a subjective process, highly dependent upon the skill, level of training, and experience of the prosthetist/orthotist involved. Even with the application of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technologies in prosthetics and orthotics, resid...

1 School of Medicine, University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Fla. 33152. Greater knowledge and understanding of bioengineering by the prosthetics and orthotics industries during the past twenty years have resulted in the development of highly functional and sophisticated appliances. For example, modern prostheses for lowerand upperextremity amputees are now designed with proper ...