Impact of Medical Advancement: Prostheses

*Samreen Hussain, Sarmad Shams and Saad Jawaid Khan*

### **Abstract**

This chapter shall provide a brief introduction to the prostheses and their development in the current advance technological era. The prosthesis design, control, and architecture completely changed with the change in the amputation level. The transradial amputee stump design, electronics, battery, and circuit placement change significantly with the change of the residual arm of the amputee. This leads to designing the prostheses with the focus of the amputation level and ease of customization. Recent development in the 3D printing and open source prosthetic design leads the user to choose, modify, and print the prostheses with the required sets of functionalities. In this chapter, a brief introduction of the prostheses has been given, starting with the types of prostheses according to the level of amputation and functionality. Then, the state-of-the-art prostheses available commercially and under research will be introduced. Afterward, the 3D printed prostheses are discussed. This chapter will end with the comparison of the medical advancement over the average life of people in general and comparison of the same for countries with low and high per capita income.

**Keywords:** prostheses, upper limb, lower limb, amputation, myoelectric, 3D printing, state-of-the-art, per capita income

#### **1. Introduction**

According to the estimation of the World Health Organization (WHO), 650 million individuals suffer from a disability worldwide. About 80% out of 650 million individuals reside in developing countries [1]. Among 650 million, approximately 3 million suffer from the upper limb amputation and 2.4 million of which live in the developing countries [2]. According to the study conducted in 2016, the population of upper limb amputation is suffering from 16% transhumeral, 12% transradial, 2% forequarter, 3% shoulder disarticulation, 1% elbow disarticulation, 2% wrist disarticulation, 61% transcarpal, and 3% bilateral limb loss [3]. The rehabilitation services to overcome the disability by using prostheses are so uncommon and expensive that only 3% of the amputees in the developing countries have access to them [1].

The prostheses are the artificial devices that improve the quality of life of a disabled person by replacing the missing or lost limb due to congenital disease or trauma or injury [4]. The prostheses may replace the lost or missing limb in terms of appearance, functionality, or both. The prostheses may be classified by the level of amputation and by their functionality (as shown in **Figure 1**) [3, 5–7].

This section will begin with the brief introduction of the types of prostheses due to amputation and functionality. Then, the commercially available prostheses

**Figure 1.** *Classification of prostheses.*

are discussed, followed by the state-of-the-art prostheses under development. At the end of this section, 3D printed prostheses are discussed. Finally, the section is concluded with a tabular comparison of all these prostheses highlighting the affordability of the prostheses.
