UNLABELLED In Sierra Leone, West Africa, there are many people with disabilities in need of rehabilitation services after a long civil war. PURPOSE The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of prosthetic and orthotic service delivery in Sierra Leone from the local staff's perspective. METHOD Fifteen prosthetic and orthotic technicians working at all the rehabilitation...

INTRODUCTION: Free functioning muscle transfers (FFMTs), nerve grafting and nerve transfers have led to improved functional outcomes in brachial plexus injury (BPI) patients. Reports have shown that 39% of FFMTs and 26% of nerve transfers for elbow flexion achieve ≥ M4 elbow flexion strength.1 However, there remains a substantial number of patients with less favorable functional outcomes that n...

The use of rehabilitative ultrasound imaging (RUSI) to evaluate diaphragm thickness during breathing in athletes who suffer from non-specific lumbopelvic pain presents some measurement errors. purpose this study was intra- and inter-sessions, inter-rater reliabilities, concurrent validity measurements using transcostal RUSI with a novel thoracic orthotic device that used fix the US probe versus...

1 This article appeared originally in the September 1965 issue of the Orthopedic and Prosthetic Appliance Journal, having been prepared at the request of the Committee on Advances in Prosthetics and Orthotics of the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association. It is being republished in Artificial Limbs in the belief that the device and procedure described will be of interest to our readers. T...

[3] or is moving an exercise machine or an orthotic device. In systems of this nature, the human arm dynamics are integrated with the machine dynamics, resulting in behavior specific to the total system. The performance and stability of the system taken as a whole are both functions of not only the machine dynamics, but also the human arm dynamics. Evideoce for instability in a human-machine sy...

Background Before launching a new bespoke foot orthotic (FO) product, it is necessary to understand how it works under compressive loads. Additive manufacturing and the selective laser sintering process in particular can enable a number of innovative and functional features to be integrated to the FO device. A simple example of this design freedom is to adjust the shell thickness of an FO. This...

This paper will present a simple, low cost orthotic device designed to be used in underserved areas of the world that is capable of achieving the sequential correction of clubfoot in the newborn that is currently managed almost universally utilizing Ponseti casting. Despite the widely acknowledged efficacy of the serial casting developed by Dr. Ponseti in the 1950s, there are circumstances wher...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the influence of a custom foot orthotic intervention on the lower extremity dynamics in healthy runners. DESIGN Three-dimensional kinematics and kinetics were collected on 15 female runners (>15 miles per week) while each performed the over-ground running trials in either a shoe only or a shoe+custom foot orthotic condition. Kinematic and kinetic variables were analyz...

BACKGROUND The effectiveness of bracing on preventing curve progression in coronal plane for mild and moderate adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) patients has been confirmed by previous radiographic researches. However, a hypokyphotic effect on the sagittal plane has been reported by a few studies. A relatively increasing number of AIS patients were noticed to wear a new kind of elastic orth...

OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that a custom-fit valgus knee brace and custom-made lateral wedge foot orthotic will have greatest effects on decreasing the external knee adduction moment during gait when used concurrently. DESIGN Proof-of-concept, single test session, crossover trial. SETTING Biomechanics laboratory within a tertiary care center. PARTICIPANTS Patients (n=16) with varus ...