Western graduates create innovative new design for prosthetic legs

Western students create new prosthetic leg design Two students designed an automatically adjustable prosthetic socket to help lower limb amputees. Amandalina Letterio explains.

Vessl Prosthetics co-founders Sydney Robinson and Oleksiy Zaika are refining their design of an automatically adjustable socket for prosthetic legs.

"People with leg amputations right now, just like if you wear the wrong size pair of shoes. They have a socket that goes on to their leg that often doesn't fit well. And in the same way you get chafing and blisters, amputees experience that with their leg as well,” said Robinson. “The problem is that as their leg is shrinking or swelling from the heat or the cold or what you ate the day before. It doesn't fit inside of that socket that is a rigid bucket for a lack of a better phrase.”

They're hoping to get it on the market by next year.

"We are creating a socket that still has rigid panels on it. You want to have a nice even mix of panels that provide the rigidity and stability so that a person feels comfortable walking on it continuously and knows what to expect in terms of the feedback that they get when they put their weight on it, but at the same time it's comfortable. It is a solid looking shell with modular looking pieces on it that are adjusting as the limb needs it,” Zaika told CTV News.

The idea came to the Western University graduates after visiting a diabetes clinic.

"Diabetes is the leading cause of leg amputation. We met a lot of amputees. They were all struggling with this problem where their leg wasn't fitting inside of their socket,” explained Robinson.

The product aims to dramatically increase the quality of life for lower limb amputees, like Geoff Turner, one of Vessl Prosthetic’s consultants.

He said prosthetic legs can be extremely painful and most amputees opt for a wheelchair.

"I would try and wear an uncomfortable prosthetic and I would try and struggle through, but if it's uncomfortable it’s ill-fitting. If it's illfitting, I'll get an injury," said Turner.

Robinson and Zaika are trying to get the product covered by insurance.

"So that it is not only targeting a very niche demographic that can afford them so that the mass majority of people can get these devices and be able to use them," Zaika elaborated.