Advanced Arm Dynamics not only builds prosthetic upper limbs, but helps its patients get their lives back to normal
The Times, May 13, 2010When you first see Chino Acosta, there is nothing unusual that catches your eye — even if you know beforehand that he is missing an arm.
Then you look him up and down, and you see it. His left hand. It looks a little different, but only slightly. If it was his right hand, you wouldn’t hesitate shaking it.
But it’s his left hand, and he can do some amazing things with it.
Acosta has a dynamic arm — an electronic prosthesis, created by Tigard’s Advanced Arm Dynamics — an arm that helps him lead a fairly normal life.
And he likes it a lot.
“One of the things I like about it is for driving,”
Acosta says, making a motion like he’s holding onto a steering wheel
with his artificial hand. “Driving is really comfortable.”
Acosta lost his hand in a job-related accident six years ago. After some reconstructive surgery that didn’t produce the results he was hoping for, he decided to have his arm amputated just below the elbow. Then he came to Advanced Arm Dynamics and they built him the arm he now uses — a myoelectric prosthesis that has rotation at the wrist and an open-close function for the hand. And it looks surprisingly natural.
Acosta’s face lights up with a little, sly smile as he rotates his hand 360 degrees — something those of us with natural hands can’t do.
The “skin” on his prosthetic hand and forearm is made of silicone and painted to match Acosta’s natural skin. The forearm even has hair taken from his other arm embeded in it.
The only problem, Acosta jokes, is that in the summertime it doesn’t tan like his real arm.
The hand looks uncannily real, right down to the veins on the top of the hand and the fingernails — which, by the way, never need clipping.
The movement of the hand is limited. It is fixed in a cupped, gripping shape, looking like it’s constantly ready to grab something. Besides the unlimited rotation, its basic movement is to open and close.
Those movements are controlled by the flexing of two basic muscles in Acosta’s forearm. The twitching of one muscle causes the hand to open and the twitching of another muscle causes it to close. A quick flexing of respective muscles causes the hand to rotate one way or the other.
Acosta said learning to use the arm was relatively easy and only took a couple of weeks. Training begins with a computer program that uses myotraining and simulation software to virtually imitate the movement of the prosthetic hand.
“Before they even think about making you this,” he says, motioning toward his prosthetic arm, “they train you on the computer. By the time you get this, you just put it on, and no problem.”
Getting back to normal
Mac Lang, the clinical director and prosthetist of the Adavanced Arm Dynamics Northwest Center of Excellence in Tigard, says the company exclusively specializes in upper limb prosthetics. And one of the things that sets the company apart from other prosthetic providers is its emphasis on long-term rehabilitation.
“We provide the prosthesis, but we also provide the rehabilitation for the patient to work that prosthesis into their everyday life,” says Lang.
The clinic’s occupational therapy room is equipped with various real-life objects which patients can train on to get used to using their limb.
“Something as simple as stacking cones may not be exciting or fun, and they often get tired of doing it here 100 times,” Lang said. “Then they go out to Starbucks and have to pick up a cup of coffee and because they’ve done it here 100 times, it takes the anxiety away of having to do it in public in an uncontrolled setting.”
Lang says a typical patient for them is one who, like Acosta, lost a limb in a job-related accident.
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