Vinnie’s Arm Support
Vinnie has SMA type 1 and a few years ago he suffered a cardiac arrest resulting in a brain injury and dystonic posture. He has extremely limited movement and communication capacity.
His OT found that, when his elbows were supported by her, he had some movement in his forearms and she wanted to be able to develop this to larger and stronger movement that could be detected to allow him to operate a LucioMate device.
The request was to create something that would reproduce the support that a human hand could offer so that he could exercise and eventually have some small amount of independence.
The Challenge
Vinnie has almost no movement. His mum and OT want him to be able to develop what small movement he has in his forearms to eventually control a LucioMate. The movement can only be detected when his arm is almost vertical and it needs a lot of support to hold it but not so much that it stops him moving. Therefore he needed a device that would reliably reproduce the effect of being held by an adult. Nothing is available commercially that even approximates to his specific needs which is why his OT turned to REMAP.
The solution
The device needed to be firm enough to hold Vinnie’s arm in place but soft enough to not hurt him. It also needed to compensate for his two arms being of different sizes and to allow him to grow. So the width needed to be adjustable. It needed to work equally well in his bed or wheelchair so the angle of support also needed to be adjustable. What was developed was a soft clamp made from two blocks of closed cell foam. One side is mounted on a rigid base that clamps to the wheelchair and the other side is attached via threaded nylon rods and wing nuts. The inner surface is lined with removable soft foam to allow for both comfort and movement.
This photo illustrate the adjustable clamping available
Here the photo shows Vinnie in action with his arm held vertically and the movement detectible.
The benefit
This device has started Vinnie on his journey to allow him more movement and more communication than he previously had. The movements are small but detectible to allow him increased control and this should increase as he gets stronger. The hard work is now going to be down to Vinnie, his mum and his OT but they all seemed to be happy with what they now have to work with.
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