Prosthetic Limbs Essay

Throughout human existence people are always losing limbs through accidents and other problems. Getting your leg run over by a car could crush it also if your arm catches on fire it would destroy it. Before the development of bionic limbs people would have to live their lives without some limbs, this causes trouble and pain for the person. The development of bionic limbs has made lives easier for those with missing limbs because they can have new limbs. Recently a bionic arm capable of picking up delicate object was approved by the US Medical Authorities (Robot arm gets official US approval). Prosthetic limbs date back to the fifth Egyptian Dynasty (2750-2625 B.C.); archaeologists have found the oldest known splint from that period. The earliest known artificial limb was made around 500 B.C., Herodotus wrote of a prisoner who escaped from his chains by cutting off his foot, which he later replaced with a wooden substitute (The History of Prosthetics).

There are different types of prosthetic limbs with different ambitions, some connect to your nerves and the others are controlled by buttons. TMR in short for Targeted muscle Re-innervation is a new technology that makes a person have control of their limb by connecting their nerves. It was developed by Todd Kuiken at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. In the surgical procedure needed for TMR the amputated nerves are redirected to control a substitute healthy muscle somewhere else in the body. For example the surgeon might attach the nerves that once controlled the arms to a part of the patient’s chest. After the procedure when the person tries to move the arm the chest muscles contract. This is important because the electrical activity in the chest sensed by electrodes is use...

... middle of paper ...

...e leg can range from 5,000 to 50,000 dollars while a prosthetic limb for the arm ranges from about 3,000 to 30,000 dollars (Prostheses Prosthetic and Artificial Limbs) with prosthetic limbs developing each time the prices keep increasing. Most insurance companies would not pay 11,000 dollars for a prosthetic limb therefore most amputees do not get the full experience of having a prosthetic limb.

The development of prosthetic limbs is ever increasing, impacting the lives of amputees. With the rate of development in prosthetic limbs, in a few years amputees should be able too much more making it feel like they never lost a limb. Prosthetic limbs have some few problems like some of them are expensive, they can be hard to control, etc. Never the less the impact they have on amputees is ever growing making it so that the amputees feel like they have a purpose in life.