Revolutionary Bionic Hand Allows Karin to Live a Pain-free Life

Saturday - October 14 2023, 05:29 UTC - 1 year ago

A collaborative effort of researchers from Italy, Australia, Sweden, and the US developed a bionic arm which can fuse with the bones and work with the neurons in the body to deliver high functionality and reduce phantom limb pain. Despite challenges, Karin became the first recipient of the bionic hand, which allows her to carry out 80 percent of the activities of daily life and has significantly reduced her pain, thus enhancing her quality of life.

A collaborative effort of researchers from Italy, Australia, Sweden, and the US has led to the development of a bionic arm that can fuse with the bones and work with the neurons in the body to deliver high functionality, a press release said.

In a farming accident twenty years ago in Sweden, Karin lost her right arm. She was given a conventional prosthesis that she found not only uncomfortable but also unreliable. Karin did not find the prosthesis was helping her carry on with her routine life in a meaningful way.

To make the situation worse, Karin faced phantom limb pain, which she describes as akin to "my hand in a meat grinder." This put Karin under a lot of stress and she had to take high doses of painkillers.

Fusion machine with humans .

Karin's experience with her prosthetic arm is not different from most amputees, many of whom even reject sophisticated prostheses because of the pain and discomfort associated with attachment. This often results in extremely limited or unreliable control over the prosthesis and a collaborative effort of researchers from different parts of the world set their minds to change it.

Led by Max Ortiz Catalan, research head of neural prosthetics at the Bionics Institute in Australia, the team was looking for ways to fuse an electronic prosthesis with the neurons in the body, which can effectively control its movement.

Additionally, to achieve more accurate attachment, the team turned to osseointegration, a process where the titanium of the prosthesis fuses into the bone tissue to create a mechanical connection, which conventional prostheses lack.

Karin became the first recipient of the bionic hand, for which surgery was performed in Sweden to rearrange the nerves and muscles in her hand to provide more motor control information to the prosthesis.

Challenges and success .

In Karin's case, the challenge was the site of amputation below her elbow. In such cases, there are two bones, the radius and ulna in the forearm, that need to be aligned and loaded equally.

The robotic hand developed by Prensilia has unique components that allow the user to carry out 80 percent of the activities of daily life.In addition to the functionality the bionic hand is giving her, Karin has also observed a reduction in pain, decreasing her dependence on painkillers. "Our integrated surgical and engineering approach also explains the reduction in pain, as Karin is now using somewhat the same neural resources to control the prosthesis as she did for her missing biological hand," explained Catalan in the press release.

"The biological integration of titanium implants into bone tissue creates opportunities to further advance amputee care," added Rickard Brånemark, a research affiliate at MIT, who led the surgery. "By combining osseointegration with reconstructive surgery, implanted electrodes, and AI, we can restore human function in an unprecedented way.

The impact of this research is best described by Karin, who said, "For me, this research has meant a lot, as it has given me a better life." .