Taylor Colvin, Utah Valley University
Health
Introduction: There are millions of people in need of prosthetics worldwide and only a very small percentage currently have access to appropriate prosthetic care. As amputees are unable to afford a prosthetic, they are often incapable of maintaining many social interactions and provide for their basic needs. Utah Valley University’s Mobility Mission traveled to Guatemala to manufacture prosthetic limbs for those individuals in need. Our research can also encourage manufacturers to continue developing a better affordable prosthetic that can be donated to those amputees in need to restore quality of life to those individuals.
Methods: Patients were filmed walking with two Casio HS EX-ZR700 cameras, one from the anterior view and the other from the lateral view. Each patient walked a distance of 20 feet while at a set stride length. We will be using the Maxtrac program, a type of motion analysis software, to analyze the joint angles of the knee and ankle of each patient filmed.
Results: Analysis of data is still required. The lack of care has caused the delayed process in receiving a prosthetic leg in many of the patients we tested. Because of this issue, we believe the gait pattern of the sound limb has been negatively altered due to poor compensation from not having a proper prosthetic leg. This would produce a better gait pattern with the prosthetic leg than the other leg.
Discussion: We perceive poor gait patterns are developed because of the length of time it takes to receive a prosthetic and the poor prosthetic quality amputees can afford in developing countries. We hypothesize that of the amputees we analyzed that received a prosthetic directly following their amputation will have much better gait patterns than those that had to wait for an extended period of time.