Delivery of UK military upper limb prosthetics: current concepts and future directions.

Upper limb prosthetics have a challenging task. A natural upper limb combines strength, coordination and dexterity to accomplish daily activities such as eating, writing, working and social interaction. Artificially replicating these functions requires a prosthetic with composite, synchronous motor function while maintaining sensory feedback and skeletal stability. Achieving these functions requires interfaces between biology and machine across nerve, muscle, bone and skin. This leads to issues related to infection, foreign material encapsulation and implant stability, and electrical signal transduction and interpretation. Over the last 20 years the advent of technologies such as osseointegration, targeted muscle reinnervation, implantable myoelectric sensors, peripheral nerve interfaces and pattern recognition technology has sought to address these problems.Due to many advances in prehospital care, truncated timelines to damage control surgery and improved combat personal protective equipment, the numbers of amputees have increased with more patients surviving injury. From October 2001 to March 2019 there were 333 amputees from Afghanistan and Iraq compared with 457 fatalities over a similar period. Over a third of these were significant multiple amputees. With a functional, robust upper limb prosthetic which mirrors or exceeds normal function, injured service personnel could be returned to an active combat role. This has benefits for their physical and mental health, improves employability prospects and allows Defence to retain some of its most highly motivated and skilled people who represent significant financial investment.

Longitudinal study of medical downgrades in the Royal Air Force.

INTRODUCTION: As the focus of the Royal Air Force (RAF) shifts from sustained to contingency operations and the number of personnel is reduced, the burden of retained, medically downgraded personnel may affect operational readiness. The main aims were: to define the prevalence of morbidity leading to permanent medical downgrading; to determine at risk populations and identify areas for improvement. METHOD: Database of personnel referred to the RAF Medical Board was analysed from January 2012 to October 2013 and January 2017 to December 2019. Patients were excluded if they did not require a formal medical board; incomplete and duplicate entries were also excluded. The primary reason for medical downgrade was categorised with an ICD-10 code. Further subanalysis compared musculoskeletal disease with age, individual trade groups and anatomic region. RESULTS: 2% of RAF service personnel were permanently downgraded annually. Musculoskeletal disease was the leading cause for permanent downgrade across both periods: 58% and 49%. Female personnel were at a greater risk of musculoskeletal downgrade compared with males. Spinal and knee pathology were the leading cause for downgrading among 'high risk' personnel. Personnel downgraded due to musculoskeletal pathology were often retained in a limited role with 10% and 5% retained as medically fully deployable. 14% and 12% of personnel downgraded due to musculoskeletal pathology were medically discharged. CONCLUSION: Musculoskeletal disease was the leading cause for permanent medical downgrades in the RAF. A greater proportion of downgraded personnel with musculoskeletal conditions were retained in service with medical limitations rather than medically discharged.

Improving outcomes for amputees: The health-related quality of life and cost utility analysis of osseointegration prosthetics in transfemoral amputees.

AIM: Some amputees are unable to adequately ambulate using conventional socket prosthetics, osseointegrated prosthetics have been described as an alternative strategy in this patient group. This paper aims to assess the effect of osseointegrated prosthetics, commonly simply referred to as osseointegration, in transfemoral amputees on health-related quality of life and cost analysis. METHODS: Two centre analysis of patients receiving transcutaneous femoral osseointegration using The Osseointegration Group of Australia Osseointegration Prosthetic Limb (OGAP-OPL) implant. Retrospective health utility and cost analysis of prospectively collected patient reported health outcome data. Osseointegration cost was compared with the yearly cost of a poorly fitting conventional prosthetic determining cost/Quality Adjusted Life Year. RESULTS: Eighty amputees received osseointegration. Mean age was 39 years (range 20-57) and 66% were male (n = 53). The majority of subjects underwent unilateral (n = 62, 77.5%) rather than bilateral surgery (n = 18, 22.5%). Trauma was the most common indication (n = 59, 74%). Maximum follow up was 10.5-years. Mean preoperative EQ5D HUV in pooled data was 0.64 (SEM 0.025) increasing to 0.73 (0.036) at 5-years and 0.78 (0.051) at 6 years with continued improvement up to 10.5-years. In subgroup analysis those with a starting EQ5D HUV <0.60 reached a cost/QALY of <£30,000 at 5-years postoperatively and show statistically significant improvement in EQ5D HUV. The UK military experience was wholly positive with a mean starting EQ5D HUV of 0.48 (0.017) with significant (p < 0.05) improvement in EQ5D HUV at each time point and a resultant reducing cost/QALY at each time point being £28,616.89 at 5 years. CONCLUSION: There is both a quality of life and financial argument in favour of osseointegration in select patients with above transfemoral amputations. In those unable to mobilise satisfactorily with traditional prostheses and a pre-intervention score of <0.60, a consistent cost effectiveness and quality of life benefit can be seen. Such patients should be considered for osseointegration as these patients reap the maximum benefit and cost effectiveness of the device. This evidence lends strongly to the debate advocating the use of osseointegration through centrally funded resources, including the NHS.

Ethical, legal and practical issues of establishing an adipose stem cell bank for research.

Access to human tissue is critical to medical research, however the laws and regulations surrounding gaining ethical and legal access to tissue are often poorly understood. Recently, there has been a huge increase in the interest surrounding the therapeutic application of adipose tissue, and adipose-derived stem cells. To facilitate our own research interests and possibly assist our local colleagues and collaborators, we established a Research Tissue Bank (RTB) to collect, store and distribute human adipose tissue derived cells with all the appropriate ethical approval for subsequent downstream research. Here we examine the legal, ethical and practical issues relating to the banking of adipose tissue for research in the UK, and discuss relevant international guidelines and policies. We also share our experiences of establishing an RTB including the necessary infrastructure and the submission of an application to a Research Ethics Committee (REC).

Septic arthritis of the knee: the use and effect of antibiotics prior to diagnostic aspiration.

Septic arthritis of the native knee joint and total knee arthroplasty both cause diagnostic and treatment issues. There is no gold standard test to diagnose a joint infection and the use of joint aspiration is commonly relied on. It is widely accepted by orthopaedic surgeons that antibiotics should be withheld until aspiration has been performed to increase the odds of identifying an organism. Patients often present to other specialties that may not be as familiar with these principles. Our study found that 25 (51%) of the 49 patients treated for septic arthritis of the native or prosthetic knee in our unit over a 3-year period had received antibiotics prior to discussion or review by the on-call orthopaedic service. Patients were significantly less likely to demonstrate an organism on initial microscopy (entire cohort: p = 0.001, native knees: p = 0.006, prosthetic knees: p = 0.033) or on subsequent culture (entire cohort: p = 0.001, native knees: p = 0.017, prosthetic knees: p = 0.012) of their aspirate if they had received antibiotics. The sensitivity of microscopy in all patients dropped from 58% to 12% when patients had received antibiotics (native knees: 46% to 0%, prosthetic knees: 72% to 27%). The sensitivity of the culture dropped from 79% to 28% in all patients when the patient had received antibiotics (native knees: 69% to 21%, prosthetic knees: 91% to 36%). This study demonstrated how the management of patients with suspected cases of septic arthritis of the knee may be compromised by empirical administration of antibiotics. These patients were significantly less likely to demonstrate an organism on microscopy and culture of their initial aspirate. There is a significant high false negative rate associated with knee aspiration with prior administration of antibiotic therapy.

Frozen shoulder.

Frozen shoulder is commonly encountered in general orthopaedic practice. It may arise spontaneously without an obvious predisposing cause, or be associated with a variety of local or systemic disorders. Diagnosis is based upon the recognition of the characteristic features of the pain, and selective limitation of passive external rotation. The macroscopic and histological features of the capsular contracture are well-defined, but the underlying pathological processes remain poorly understood. It may cause protracted disability, and imposes a considerable burden on health service resources. Most patients are still managed by physiotherapy in primary care, and only the more refractory cases are referred for specialist intervention. Targeted therapy is not possible and treatment remains predominantly symptomatic. However, over the last ten years, more active interventions that may shorten the clinical course, such as capsular distension arthrography and arthroscopic capsular release, have become more popular. This review describes the clinical and pathological features of frozen shoulder. We also outline the current treatment options, review the published results and present our own treatment algorithm.

Winner of the Frank Horan essay prize: the effect of war on the evolution of the treatment of open fractures.

This paper outlines the history of advances made in the treatment of open fractures that have occurred during wartime.

Physical conditioning and left ventricular performance in the elderly: assessment by radionuclide angiocardiography.

In contrast to young persons, normal elderly persons who undergo symptom-limited dynamic exercise demonstrate a decrease in left ventricular (LV) contractile performance characterized by a decrease in LV ejection fraction. To test the hypothesis that physical conditioning can be achieved in older persons and produces improvement in the exercise-induced decrease in LV ejection fraction observed during normal aging, we examined 24 normal elderly persons (mean age 72.0 years) before and after a 12-week program of physical training. The subjects had been screened for evidence of cardiovascular disease including rest and exercise stress electrocardiograms. All subjects underwent rest and exercise upright sitting radionuclide angiocardiography before and after the training program. The subjects achieved cardiovascular training effects as measured by increased functional capacity and decreased double product at one-half the maximum work load attained at the initial stress test. A significant increase occurred after training in the cardiac index response to exercise (p less than 0.02) and in the augmentation of the end-diastolic volume index produced by exercise (p less than 0.05). However, the exercise-induced decrease in LV ejection fraction and increase in LV end-systolic volume index remained unaltered by training. In conclusion, although older persons can achieve overall training effects from a program of physical conditioning, the age-associated differences in LV contractile performance remained unchanged. Our data suggest that deconditioning is not a significant contributor to the decline in LV contractile performance in the elderly.

Psychological and physiological effects of physical conditioning on the elderly.

A decline in cardiovascular functioning is generally thought to occur with advancing age. The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of regular aerobic exercise on a group of 24 young-old (65-69) and old-old (70-85 yr) volunteers. Comprehensive physiological and psychological assessments were conducted in the one week preceding the 11-week conditioning program, and in the one-week period following the conclusion of the program. The conditioning program consisted of 30 min of continuous exercise on a stationary bicycle ergometer three times weekly for 11 consecutive weeks. The results of the study document the presence of significant training effects: subjects achieved longer exercise times and increased exercise workloads. Despite these changes, however, psychological changes were generally small and nonsignificant. The present data would appear to qualify the assumption that exercise is beneficial for the elderly.