Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Would You Look For In a Prosthetic Hand?
Arglebarf writes "A family member is recovering from a serious illness and, unfortunately, the medication that saved her life will probably cost her hands and feet. She is an artist by trade, so this is a pretty big deal. Replacement prostheses might restore a degree of independence, as well as enabling her to continue with her creative passions. Do any Slashdotters have experience with replacement hands? What features do you look for? Do any models allow you tweak the software for fine tuning? Beyond the day-to-day uses, she will want something that can hold small objects precisely (e.g. a paintbrush)."
Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, has been working on much more functional prosthetics. He named his bionic arm "Luke", an obvious reference we can all appreciate. Demos of it look pretty amazing. Here's the official page for it: http://www.dekaresearch.com/deka_arm.shtml Also google "Kamen Luke Arm" and you find lots of pix, vids and articles about it.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
For paint brushes and other small items I imagine holding them in her mouth will work better than current prosthetic hands.
You may be thinking about the robotic hands you can see in research clips but most available prosthetics are simple devices that open and close with a turn of the forearm.
The robotic hands suffer from difficulty getting a "close/open hand" signal from the brain. Implanted electrodes are all to some degree incompatible with human tissue and degrade over time. Sensors to read electrical signals through the skin are imprecise. Some versions use buttons manipulated by other body parts (likely toes in this case) but these are not in the mainstream.
The old fashion two finger hooks seem to be the most practical answer for a lot of people. They are cheaper, durable, don't require batteries and can do a lot of useful things with any fine motor manipulation.
A human hand is a marvel of biological engineering. Sadly it is tough to replicate in a prosthetic. Perhaps she would be a good candidate for a transplant down the road? Prosthetics may improve more quickly with so many vets having suffered limb loss. To date lower limb prosethetics seem to be well ahead of hands/arms in terms of matching the original limb's functionality. Lots of "below the knee" single amputies have no obvious impairment in terms of gait.
I can't be the only one who's thinking it needs to support a Fleshlight attachment...
This prosthetic hand is for a woman, who is going to lose her hands. Are you fucking serious that this is the best thing you can think of to say?
Ask the fucking prosthetics guy that will get/make her a new one when the time comes. I mean he is qualified to actually give opinions. How many people on here that would respond to you are going to actually have a prosthetic or even know anything about how they work/perform in the real world? None. Im sure some will say they have one or "Know a friend of a friends former roomates neighbor that one" but bottom line is they don't know dick.
This question is as stupid as asking for legal advice online in a murder trial. Its the internet, 98% of your answers will come from people who don't know shit but think they do.
There is no doubt in my mind that for now, transplant wont be an option. It is experimental and, probably more important, risky. I don't think you can be a candidate until you are stable and able to bear the stress of the transplant. The kinds of illness which she may have are unlikely to be compatible with all the surgery and anti-rejection drugs needed for transplant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krukenberg_procedure
Sorry for shouting. But save the nerves. I run a regen med research lab, and there is lots of cool stuff coming down the pipe. I know, I know, Real Soon Now, but advancements are on the way. The big limitation is going to be nerves though. No matter how much cool stuff we put together with artificial bone and patient-specific stem-cell derived muscles etc, it's all moot if you can't control it properly, and the nerves, for a variety of reasons, will be the hardest part to regenerate.
Fortunately, there has been some really interesting work done in terms of rerouting the nerves (both motor and sensory) - basically, if the nerves don't attach to anything, they die. But, if before you amputate, you take the nerves and move the ends over so they now lie against skin and muscle etc that will not be amputated, the cells remain alive (and functional). This has lots of interesting applications in terms of interfacing with prosthetics, but also in 5 or 10 years (or longer, if so - sorry, everything is often slower and more complex than we hope), this means the nerves are still there, waiting to be connected to the regenerated limb. Here is one paper that discusses it in more detail:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685921/
I don't want to give you too much false hope about where the technology is going - I am very excited about the potential, but there are still a number of obstacles. So, live for today, but there is hope for tomorrow as well.
MU