Surgery: splint – brace – or bandage – Orthopedic bandage – Splint or brace
Patent
1992-04-30
1994-05-31
Apley, Richard J.
Surgery: splint, brace, or bandage
Orthopedic bandage
Splint or brace
602 26, A61F 501
Patent
active
053165462
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to a hinge intended to be used preferably in an orthosis and has the function of supporting, protecting and/or guiding a body joint, said hinge including at least two flexible, essentially strip shaped elements arranged mutually slidable in a plane-to-plane relationship, which elements are carried by supporting members having a controlling and guiding function.
The present invention provides a hinge which is to form part of some kind of joint supporting or protecting bandage, orthosis, or to form part of a device intended to support or stiffen one or more bodily joints. The hinge can also be applied for prophylactic purposes in order to prevent injury in sports practice or in other physical activity, or to consolidate a joint which has been injured or operated upon, or to limit the range of movement of the joint, or to facilitate control or guidance of one or more joints of the body.
Usually orthoses, i.e. joint supporting bandages, include pivot means of the hinge type provided on either side of the joint of the body, e.g. the knee joint. These orthosis hinges have essential disadvantages. Firstly, they are usually provided with hinge pivots which impart to the articulation of the orthosis a stationary pivot axis, as distinguished from an anatomic joint whose axis of articulation is displaced, for example, in movement of the joint. This displacement between the orthosis and the part of the body must be assumed by the adjacent soft tissues. Furthermore, such a hinge based articulation in the orthosis does not offer any possibility of performing the rotation which takes place in e.g. the final phase of knee extension, and also this movability in relation to the orthosis must be assumed by the soft tissues. Prophylactic use of hinge pivots is hardly possible as, in order to offer adquate strength, they must be made so large that there will be a risk of injury not only to the wearer but also to other persons participating in the activity.
A knee orthosis, for example, must allow extension and flexion, should protect against violence sideways and frontways, and possibly also prevent hyperextension.
The problem of the locked and immovable pivot axis has been solved, at least in part, by means of another type of hinge disclosed in the German Patent Specification No. 838 479, where the hinge includes a plurality of thin steel leaf springs placed one upon the other in a similar way as in a laminated type spring. However, in order to afford sufficient lateral and rotational stability, particularly if only one spring assembly is to be used on the outside of the knee, the hinge will become too stiff in flexing to be usable in practice.
Another type of hinge, which also offers at least some adaption to the anatomic joint, is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,115. The hinge disclosed therein comprises two opposite holders or housings, each provided with a plurality of elongated flexible rib elements spaced to form interspaces, so that the ribs of one housing are slideably received between the ribs of the other housing.
These ribs are secured in the housing elements in such a way that they will define grooves wherein the ribs of the opposite housing element are slideably received. This requires that the two housing elements have different widths. The hinge is made of plastics so that it can be washed and cleaned together with the orthosis or bandage. In order to be able to alter the strength of this hinge the distance between the two housing elements is adjusted. It is thus quite clear that this is a type of ready-made hinge which cannot readily be adjusted to a particular application. In the type of design presented in this U.S. patent application the two housing elements must definitely have the same longitudinal extension (cf. FIG. 1 of the U.S. patent specification), which clearly illustrates the inconvenience involved by this inflexibility. Obviously the hinge cannot in a smooth and simple way be adapted to the configuration of the leg. As to the strength of the hinge there is no great vari
REFERENCES:
patent: 3990116 (1976-11-01), Fixel et al.
patent: 4130115 (1978-12-01), Taylor
patent: 4366813 (1983-01-01), Nelson
patent: 4727862 (1988-03-01), Waddell et al.
Kohler Peter
Lindh Leif
Apley Richard J.
Meindl Beverly A.
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