User:Lshersh/Prosthesis

Design Trends Moving Forward  

There are many steps in the evolution of prosthetic design trends that are moving forward with time. Many design trends point to lighter, more durable, and flexible materials like carbon fiber, silicone, and advanced polymers. These not only make the prosthetic limb lighter and more durable but also allow it to mimic the look and feel of natural skin, providing users with a more comfortable and natural experience. This new technology helps prosthetic users blend in with people with normal ligaments to reduce the stigmatism for people who wear prosthetics. Another trend points towards using Bionics and Myoelectric in prosthetic design These limbs utilize sensors to detect electrical signals from the user’s residual muscles. The signals are then converted into motions, allowing users to control their prosthetic limbs using their own muscle contractions. This has greatly improved the range and fluidity of movements available to amputees, making tasks like grasping objects or walking naturally much more feasible. Integration with AI is also on the forefront to the prosthetic design. AI-enabled prosthetic limbs can learn and adapt to the user’s habits and preferences over time, ensuring optimal functionality. By analyzing the user’s gait, grip, and other movements, these smart limbs can make real-time adjustments, providing smoother and more natural motions.

The Negative Social Implication of Prosthetics

Prosthetics play a vital role in how a person perceives themselves and how other people perceive them. The ability to conceal such use enabled participants to ward off social stigmatization that in turn enabled their social integration and the reduction of emotional problems surrounding such disability. People that lose a limb first have to deal with the emotional result of losing that limb. Regardless of the reasons for amputation, whether due to traumatic causes or as a consequence of illness, emotional shock exists. It may have a smaller or larger amplitude depending on a variety of factors such as patient age, medical culture, medical cause, etc. As a result of amputation, the research participants’ reports were loaded with drama. The first emotional response to amputation was one of despair, a severe sense of self-collapse, something almost unbearable. Emotional factors are just a small part of looking at social implications. Many people who lose a limb may have lots of anxiety surrounding prosthetics and their limbs. After surgery, for an extended period of time, the interviewed patients from the National Library of Medicine noticed the appearance and increase of anxiety. A lot of negative thoughts invaded their minds. Projections about the future were grim, marked by sadness, helplessness, and even despair. Existential uncertainty, lack of control, and further anticipated losses in one’s life due to amputation were the primary causes of anxiety and consequently ruminations and insomnia. From losing a leg and getting a prosthetics there were also many factors that can happen including anger and and regret. People who lose a leg. The amputation of a limb is associated not only with physical loss and change in body image but also with an abrupt severing in one’s sense of continuity. For participants with amputation as a result of physical trauma the event is often experienced as a transgression and can lead to frustration and anger.

Concerns with Prosthesis

Ethical concerns

There are also many ethical concerns about how the prosthetics are made and produced. A wide range of ethical issues arise in connection with experiments and clinical usage of sensory prostheses: animal experimentation; informed consent, for instance, in patients with a locked-in syndrome that may be alleviated with a sensory prosthesis; unrealistic expectations of research subjects testing new devices. How prosthetics come to be and testing of the usability of the device is a major concern in the medical world. Although many positives come when a new prosthetic design is announced, how the device got to where it is leads to some questioning the ethics of prosthetics.

Debates

There are also many debates among the prosthetic community about whether they should wear prosthetics at all. This is sparked by whether prosthetics help in day-to-day living or make it harder. Many people have adapted to their loss of limb making it work for them and do not need a prosthesis in their life. Not all amputees will wear a prosthesis. In a 2011 national survey of Australian amputees, Limbs 4 Life found that 7 percent of amputees don’t wear a prosthesis, and in another Australian hospital study, this number was closer to 20 percent. Many people report being uncomfortable in prostheses and not wanting to wear them, even reporting that when wearing a prosthetic it's more cumbersome than not having one at all. These debates are natural among the prosthetic community and help us shed light on the issues that they are facing.

How a person is perceived with prosthetics

When looking at disability as a whole, it is a wide range of things. When you have a prosthetic leg or arm it can be hard to hide. Amputation can have a devastating effect on a person’s body image and sense of self. The use of prosthetic limbs may help, but when it comes to their appearance, options are often limited. Prosthetics are a vital part of people’s identity and self-expression. They affect people's view of them and lead people to feel ostracized by seeing the prosthetic. It is concluded that prosthesis use plays a social role in the lives of persons with limb loss/absence. The ability to conceal such use enabled participants to ward off social stigmatization that in turn enabled their social integration and the reduction of emotional problems surrounding such disability. These articles and research show that it's not the actual loss of a leg or different limbs that leads to people being stigmatized, it's due to the technology that leads to people being ostracized.

Design for Prosthetics

A key feature of prosthetics and prosthetic design is the idea of “designing for disabilities.” This might sound like a good idea in which people with disabilities can participate in equitable design but this is unfortunately not true. The idea of designing for disabilities is first problematic because of the underlying meaning of disabilities. It tells amputees that there is a right and wrong way to move and walk and that if amputees are adapted to the surrounding environment by their own means, then that is the wrong way. Along with that underlying meaning of disabilities, many people designing for disabilities are not actually disabled. “Design for disability" from these experiences, takes disability as the object - with the feeling from non-disabled designers that they have properly learned about their job from their own simulation of the experience. The simulation is misleading and does a disservice to disabled people - so the design that flows from this is highly problematic. Engaging in disability design should be… with, ideally, team members who have the relevant disability and are part of communities that matter to the research. This leads to people, who don't know what the day-to-day personal experiences are, designing materials that do not meet the needs or hinder the needs of people with actual disabilities.