Thursday, February 17, 2011

71

Today I went to a continuing ed class entitled "Building Blocks in Prosthetics." Since I haven't had a prostheses course yet, it was really informative! I learned all about the different types of prosthetic limbs that are available -- it was amazing to look at the history a bit and see how far prostheses have come... from wooden peg legs to $50,000 computerized legs! In particular, the technology behind making the prostheses has come along away. It used to be that in order to make a prosthetic limb, a mold of the residual limb had to be taken which is a long, tedious and often inconsistent process. Now, they use a CAD/CAM scanning system. Basically, a laser scans the residual limb and when connected to a computer with the proper software, gathers the information (measurements etc) necessary to help create the prosthesis. Absolutely awesome.

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