USER EXPERIENCES WITH TRADITIONAL AND 3D-PRINTED UPPER EXTREMITY PROSTHESES, DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY INSTRUMENT

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Additive Manufacturing (AM), colloquial known as 3D-printing, has been deemed capable to revolutionize a great number of industries, including the Health Care industry.1 In the field of upper limb prosthetics, it has been attempted to leverage the potential advantages of AM, such as crowd based design optimization, infrastructure independent fabrication, and economical material use, in the interest of providing low-cost, readily available devices to recipients whose needs were only insufficiently met by traditional approaches of device prescription and fitting. While the popular media has been quick to emphasize the potential – perceived or real – of 3D printed prostheses, clinicians have generally been less euphoric and the base of scientific evidence on questions related to these applications has been small.2 As with most research endeavors in prosthetics and orthotics, recruiting sufficient sample sizes to allow solid conclusions is a perennial challenge also in this sub-field. As a consequence, the effectiveness of the many 3D-printed upper limb devices made by volunteers of the E-nable community (Fig.1) is yet to be determined. Self-reported outcome assessment tools can somewhat mitigate the issue of low sample sizes. However, none have been applied to a wider range of device classes, to allow comparative analyses across those. We describe the development and preliminary testing of an online based survey tool to generate comparison outcome data for a wide variety of upper limb prosthetics devices, including varieties that are 3D-printed by hobbyists. Abstract PDF  Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cpoj/article/view/32009/24428 How to cite: Mankoff  J, Savage S, Eckert S, Ngo C, Fiedler G. USER EXPERIENCES WITH TRADITIONAL AND 3D-PRINTED UPPER EXTREMITY PROSTHESES, DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY INSTRUMENT. CANADIAN PROSTHETICS & ORTHOTICS JOURNAL, VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2, 2018; ABSTRACT, POSTER PRESENTATION AT THE AOPA’S 101ST NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, SEPT. 26-29, VANCOUVER, CANADA, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33137/cpoj.v1i2.32009                                                                            Abstracts were Peer-reviewed by the American Orthotic Prosthetic Association (AOPA) 101st National Assembly Scientific Committee.  http://www.aopanet.org/