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PROSTHETIC TECHNOLOGY SPEEDS WOUNDED WARRIORS

ON ROAD TO RECOVERY -- "I want to look for that first

triathlon when I get back and I'm able. I want to be

able to throw the football with my kids."

For more information about veterans and prosthetics, use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here...
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Story here... http://news.medill.northw
estern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=109203

Story below:

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Prosthetic technology speeds wounded warriors on road to recovery

by Benjamin Miraski

WASHINGTON – “I want to look for that first triathlon when I get back and I’m able. I want to be able to throw the football with my kids…”

Master Chief Petty Officer James “Will” Wilson, 48, trailed off to silence, his face reddened. His eyes stared out at the floor of the waiting room as he reached down and stroked what remained of his right leg.

Wilson’s troubles with his leg began on May 8, 2003, as he prepped the USS Enterprise to cross the Atlantic for what would have been his fourth tour in the Persian Gulf.

“A storm came in and hit the ship broadside as I was walking across the brow,” Wilson said. “It disengaged… I dropped some 30 feet and hit the pier.”

Wilson broke his neck, snapped his left leg and shattered his right foot and heel.

After 26 years in the Navy, Wilson faced losing his right leg. He chose to try to save it, but several surgeries later, the leg still had not improved.

“The bones got to be so brittle to where they’d drill to reposition fixtures, and the bone was sort of like chalk and it wouldn’t hold anything,” Wilson explained.

A few years later, approaching 30 years in the service, Wilson chose to have the right foot amputated.

Despite receiving treatment from civilian doctors in Pensacola, Fla., where he is currently stationed, he had continual issues with his residual limb – the part of his right leg that remains below his knee.

Wilson still believed he could be whole again, but hope for recovery was more than 800 miles to the north at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where doctors work with the latest in prosthetic devices. He is confident that the doctors in Washington will finally be able to provide something that works for him.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted a renewed focus on prosthetic devices, enabling the technology to improve rapidly. Those advances, including microprocessor knees and better-fitting graphite sockets, have speeded recovery and allowed amputees to do things that have not been possible in the past.

The technology has dramatically improved from the days when a doctor would sit in a back room “whittling a leg out of an elm tree,” Wilson said.

Down the hall from Wilson at Walter Reed, Army Cpl. Christopher Levi, 25, waited for his next appointment.
“There is a bright side to war,” Levi said.

“Because of war, we get advances in medicine and more funding,” he added. “That leads to better technology, which leads to better rehab.”

Levi seemed an unlikely spokesman for the current conflicts. The Long Island native is in a wheelchair, the victim of a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq. Both of his legs have been replaced with prosthetics.

He reached out to shake hands, his right hand still heavily bandaged.

“I normally have a much firmer handshake, but I don’t have any tendons in the back of my hand right now,” Levi joked.

Yet, he is serious about his rehabilitation and the way that the technology, all of which he is eager to try, has helped him.

A Busy Unit

The medical center’s prosthetic lab is alive with sounds. In one corner, a technician sits with a plaster cast of an upper thigh, shaving it down with a file. At other cluttered workbenches, technicians are using power tools to make minor adjustments to the devices that will shortly go to wounded service men and women.

Most of the lab’s tables are so cluttered with graphite sockets, molded feet and metallic devices, it is difficult to tell how the staff has room to maneuver and work.

The reason for the hectic clutter is simple.

As of early November, 844 service member amputees from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been treated in the U.S. -- 608 of them have come through Walter Reed. Almost a quarter have lost multiple limbs.

Joseph Miller, a certified prosthetist who is the director of the center’s prosthetics lab, pointed to two leg devices standing on the floor. The advanced piston-shaped devices represent the latest in lower extremity technology.

“We just start out with the advanced systems,” Miller said. “That’s part of the philosophy of the center here… that it’s advanced training. We believe they (the wounded) were tactical athletes prior to being injured and we will treat them that way.”

Warrior-athletes such as Wilson who has finished six triathlons – he brought his bicycle from Florida specifically so he could get a prosthetic cycling leg -- are seeing the benefits of more money being put into prosthetics.

Miller held up a full leg, from a hip socket formed from hardened graphite down to a foot. In the past, small fields such as hip design or upper arm prosthetics were ignored, but advances are now being pursued.

“Now, because there is a big emphasis, there’s a lot of research money, there’s a lot of congressional money,” Miller said. “Companies are now designing new things that not only enable our patients but the civilian sector as well.”

Walter Reed partners with companies and universities to help develop the changes. The hospital is currently working with Clemson University on a new shape-shifting material to make the socket that fits on the residual limb more comfortable.

The medical center also tests new products, sometimes months before they are available to a wider audience. The additional scrutiny that a product gets at Walter Reed is important to establish its credibility before it is released to the civilian population, according to Miller.

More Advanced Rehab

“The whole world of prosthetics has met a formidable obstacle but the technology is just jumping with leaps and bounds to overcome those obstacles,” Wilson said.

Because so many of the patients want to be running and jumping again, some of the fastest-changing devices are the legs.

Most lower-extremity devices now come with programmable microchips in the knees that can be adjusted for more or less stability. A new powered knee is the first to provide propulsion power to help its wearer stand up.

Greg Schneider is a certified prosthetist who works in research and development at Otto Bock HealthCare, the German company that manufactures the C-LEG, one of the most advanced lower extremity devices on the market. The technology comes at a healthy price, somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 each.

The C-LEG, which debuted in 1997, has undergone several revisions, but advancements have accelerated in the past few years. Schneider said that a new version of the prosthetic lower leg is in development with help from the military. It will be hardened to enable its users to return to combat in the future.

“The funding has come, especially from government sources, to make the advances happen,” Schneider said.
Working closely with the Army medical centers has also allowed Schneider and companies like Otto Bock to see how the advances make a difference in the rehabilitation.

The more stable C-LEG, for example, has patients walking faster than ever before.

“In the past, we’d have to train the patients to be aware of every step they were taking,” Schneider said. “It was very much a safety issue. Now with the advances, you can just walk and then move on to the advanced training.”

Advanced training has allowed about 20 percent of the patients going through Walter Reed to return to active duty in some fashion, according to Miller. For some, that means returning to their old skill, others learn new ones. The patients making the biggest advances have even returned to the theater of combat.

It doesn’t mean the ordeal is simple, or cheap. Most patients will undergo a series of changes in their device while they are at the medical center.

New computerized methods of scanning the residual limbs have made the adjustments easier, but it is still a long process, taking on average a year to 18 months.

During that time the patients have access to the Military Advanced Training Center, a two story annex that contains most of the rehabilitation and services the patient will need at Walter Reed.

Completed last year, the center’s main feature is a room that resembles a high-tech health club. Inside, various balance balls, treadmills, bicycles and weights help patients learn to use their new devices and retrain themselves in simple activities such as rolling over.

More importantly, the center is a meeting place for the amputees, a place where they can find encouragement from others in their position.

“This is the first time I’ve been around other guys and gals in my situation,” the Navy’s Will Wilson said. It has dramatically improved the experience at Walter Reed because his wife and two children are unable to be with him.

The Road Ahead

Wilson seemed energized as he waited for his appointment. Yet, despite the anticipation of the coming hours, his focus was further out.

Wilson said he wanted “a walking leg, a running leg, a dive leg, a climbing leg, a sitting around in my underwear leg … I want to do everything. There is no reason I can’t. I have always been an athlete and I want to re-engage in everything.”

While more triathlons are on the horizon for Wilson, the climbing leg is important for fulfilling a gift to his 11-year-old daughter McKenna – a trip to a climbing wall in Pensacola.

“I’m getting this leg fabricated so I can be her buddy for the first time she climbs a wall,” he said.

Wilson will have the chance to first perfect his technique on the climbing wall at the training center.

Cpl. Christopher Levi too has bigger aspirations, and his dream is a little closer to Walter Reed than Florida.

”My goal, when I am up and walking regularly, I want to walk up the stairs” of the Lincoln Memorial, Levi said.

The Memorial at the southwest end of the capital has 98 marble steps from the Reflecting Pool to the feet of Abraham Lincoln. Many people with two whole legs have trouble making it to the top.

Levi said he thinks it is one of the best constructed buildings in U.S. history. The significance of the structure and all that has occurred there are major factors in his quest.

“But at the same time, it’s like the ultimate challenge because walking up stairs is a b----,” Levi said. “If you can walk up every single step … that’s an accomplishment.”

If Wilson hasn’t met Levi yet, he might find the perfect embodiment of his most poignant thoughts.

“The only thing that a patient is going to be held back by now is their own desire to re-engage and reintegrate into sport and society. The technology is there,” Wilson explained.

He began to pat his chest above his heart.

“It’s what’s in here and what drives that young man and woman to do what they want to do for the rest of their lives.”

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posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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