Hip Disarticulation

 Normally, the Center does not treat hip disarticulation patients, but with the foreign prosthetist here, we can do anything right?! Ha! As a team, we were happy to accept the challenge, especially after meeting this incredible patient and hearing his story. His is young, strong, and motivated and has shown excellent progress learning to walk with his prosthesis.

We have been continuously blessed by generous donations here at the Center. This time, it was a like-new Ottobock 7E7 hip joint including spare parts.

We've been fortunate to have a Physiotherapist from Switzerland join us for a short time. The timing has been perfect for her to spend many hours with our hip disarticulation patient.

Its been a fun challenge ONLY having thermoforming technology in this lab. Most prosthetic facilities at home will have both thermoforming and laminating technology available. I've found that really, once you know the tricks, you can do everything with plastic thermoforming. Do to the capacity of our oven, we had to form the plastic for this hip in 2 stages, with 2 pieces.

One of our volunteers fabricated an angled adapter for us from delrin. It's perfect. At home, it's frustrating when you don't have the right adapter; here, you just make it!