Improved harness crutch to reduce upper limb effort in swing-through gait
✍ Scribed by B.J. Andrews; M.H. Granat; B.W. Heller; J. MacMahon; L. Keating; S. Real
- Book ID
- 103995910
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1994
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 540 KB
- Volume
- 16
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1350-4533
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A novel crutch, the harness crutch, is &scribed which reduces loading on the arms during the swing phase of swingthrough gait. l?te &ice wa.s fabricated by attaching a modified mountainem'ng harness by two side straps, to mo@ed axiL2zry crutches. 7'7~ harness crutch was compared with the saddle crutch, dtxribed by Taylor in 1883. 17re sadaYe crutch produced pressures in excess of 500 m&g in ti perirwal area; no fiessures were produced in thtk area with th-e harnwc cmtch Ischial pressures produced by 'both systems were similar. In sk out of eight non-impaired subjects, sign$cantiy morefice ~4s transmit&d to the harness crutch (an average 47% of body weight) than to the saddle crutch (an average 40% of btiy weigh). A comparison of the oxygnr cost of swing-through gait was ma& between the harness crutch and unmod$ed axillq crutches; with the hamess crutch oxygen cost was sign@antly lower (p < 0.01) and there were no signijcant difknces in speed and stria2 length.