Management Of The Person With Bilateral Arm High-Level Amputations

Over the past ten years, the Prosthetics Clinical Services Department of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago has treated thirty-six (36) persons with bilateral arm amputations. Of these, twenty-three had sustained high-level bilateral limb loss. High-level is defined as the absence of a functional physiological elbow joint. In some cases the anatomical elbow is present, but the joint is impaired and non-functional necessitating a prosthetic elbow joint. This accumulated clinical experience has been augmented by significant input fiom the Northwestern University Rehabilitation Engineering Research Program in Prosthetics and Orthotics. Guided by a fitting philosophy that has evolved over this period, our combined efforts have resulted in considerable success in the rehabilitation of this most severely impaired group of persons with arm amputations.