Prostheses for symes patient scuba diving

Prostheses for symes patient scuba diving

Dominic Hannett

8/24/2005

Dear list,

Can anyone provide information on prostheses that have been designed for
either patients with long transtibial amputations or symes amputation. We
are dealing with a female patient 22yrs with bilateral symes amputations who
wishes to go scuba diving. She tends to wear alpha locking liners with
shuttle locks in a laminate socket combined with quantum truestep feet for
her day to day legs. She finds that the legs are quite long making her
rather tall.

We have tried to combine this with LA ankles for diving legs but the
combination of locks and LA ankles makes the prostheses even taller and too
heavy. We are considering cushion liners with suspension sleeves and one way
valves but are not sure if this is conducive with underwater activities.
Advice/experience of this would be greatly appreciated.

Also we are unaware of an alternative to the LA ankle which might prove
lighter - it must be able to plantarflex to 90 degrees from neutral.

I will post responses to the list.

Thanks in advance.

Dominic Hannett and Iain Briggs

Prosthetists
Oxford
UK

Dominic Hannett
Prosthetic Manager
OPCARE Ltd
Oxford
<Email Address Redacted>