Considerations for staff involved in amputee rehabilitation

Residual limb support devices on wheelchairs for people with transtibial amputations: A scoping review and survey of rehabilitation professionals in Nova Scotia

“…Ham and Richardson evaluated their redesign through feedback from over 30 patients with no additional details provided. 10 Kirby and Bruce used a focus group with 16 rehabilitation professionals to evaluate existing designs and develop the design criteria that were used to guide the design of a modified slot-board residual limb support. 7 Kirby et al subsequently performed a short-term evaluation of the design involving observation and interviews with 7 participants who trialed the modified slot-board residual limb support for a day.…”

“…Of these 51 texts, 29 did not meet the inclusion criteria, either because there was no mention of residual limb supports (n 5 27) or there was only a minor mention of residual limb supports and no evaluation (n 5 2). The remaining 22 documents that met the inclusion criteria were grouped according to the type of publication: original research papers (n 5 5), 6,7,9,10,15 guidelines (group or individual expert opinion on the rehabilitation care of lower-limb amputees) (n 5 15), [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and systematic literature reviews (n 5 2). 31,32 In Table 1, we provide the objectives, methods, results, and implications extracted from each of the research papers.…”

“…31,32 In Table 1, we provide the objectives, methods, results, and implications extracted from each of the research papers. Four 7,9,10,15 of the 5 research papers involved research on residual limb support design with 3 7,10,15 providing evaluation of the design. Designs included a redesigned swing-away residual limb support 10 and retractable slot-board designs.…”

“…Four 7,9,10,15 of the 5 research papers involved research on residual limb support design with 3 7,10,15 providing evaluation of the design. Designs included a redesigned swing-away residual limb support 10 and retractable slot-board designs. 7,9,15 The designs were generally well received, although evaluation methods were only provided in 2 of the papers.…”

“…4,5 A transtibial residual limb support for wheelchairs is an external support device attached to a wheelchair to provide support for the residual limb. A variety of fabricated and commercially available residual limb supports are commonly used in practice such as a rigid extension of the seat under the seat cushion 6 that may be supported by or dropped below the seat rails, 7 a hinged support attached to a rigid seat or the wheelchair frame, 8 a support that can slide into a rigid seat 9 or swing away and removable supports 10 that attach to the wheelchair frame or the footrest hanger (an example is shown Figure 1). The component that interfaces with the posterior aspect of the residual limb may be a removable cushion, or the cushion may be attached to the support.…”