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TENDING THE WOUNDS OF WAR -- New Wisconsin
center
uses latest technology to aid troops who lose
limbs.
Story here...
http://www.jsonline.com/
story/index.aspx?id=557474
Story below:
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Tending wounds of war
New UWM center will use latest technology to
aid troops who lose limbs
By MARK JOHNSON
markjohnson@journalsentinel.com
At a time when large numbers of soldiers are returning home injured from
Iraq and Afghanistan, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee announced
Thursday that it will open a new center that uses the latest technology
to help veterans who have lost limbs in combat.
The university's new $2.5 million Mobility Challenged Veterans Center
will be paid for with private and public grants, including $1 million in
federal money that U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) worked to secure.
"I don't know anything about science, but what I do know is that the men
and women who have laid their lives on the line for us, particularly now
in Iraq and in Afghanistan, are coming back wounded in many, many ways,"
Moore told about 50 people who had gathered at the university's Klotsche
Center.
"We have just had the 500th amputee return to us in dire need of some
physical restoration. For every death that we mourn on the battlefield,
there are 12 other soldiers who come back substantially injured, and 98
percent of those who come back wounded and injured need some sort of
rehabilitative program," she said.
More so than in past wars, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have
resulted in high rates of veterans surviving their wounds. In World War
II, Korea and Vietnam there were approximately three wounded soldiers
for every soldier killed in combat. In Afghanistan and Iraq, there have
been 12 wounded for every soldier killed.
The new UWM center, the only one of its kind in Wisconsin and one of
just a handful in the U.S., will pool the work of engineers,
rehabilitation scientists and clinicians, and include collaboration with
Milwaukee's Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Among other features, the center will use the latest dynamic radiography
technology, a process that uses X-ray imaging to allow researchers to
peer inside limbs to see the way joints move as a person walks or jumps.
Using three-dimensional, real-time views of a limb's internal structure,
scientists can assess damage more accurately and design prosthetic limbs
that will fit better and last longer.
"It's 100 times more accurate than anything out there right now," said
Yiorgos Papaioannou, an assistant professor in human movement sciences
at UWM.
Equipment and scientists
College of Health Sciences Dean Randall S. Lambrecht said the center
should "be fully up and running sometime later this spring." Most of the
labs will be housed at the university's Pavilion and the Cozzens &
Cudahy Research Center at 9100 N. Swan Road, just north of Brown Deer
Road. The federal money will be spent on equipment but also on bringing
in scientists to fill in gaps in expertise, Lambrecht said.
The center will work with veterans on engineering and research.
Lambrecht said he hopes that someday the university's research program
and the VA Medical Center will become a designated amputee center, a
move that would bring research into the hospital.
Moore spoke of the new center as a concrete way to show support for the
nation's soldiers.
"You hear a lot of rhetoric. You watch C-SPAN and you hear us always
talking about whether or not we're going to support the troops," Moore
said. "But this is where the rubber meets the road - right here - in
terms of helping our soldiers."
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Larry Scott
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