First men, now women receive prosthetic arm prototype

The Washington Post : Claudia Mitchell, a resident of Ellicott City, Maryland has become the first women to receive a prosthetic arm that is similar in capabilities to a prototype arm worn by Jesse Sullivan that was mentioned earlier this month in Physics Today magazine. Mitchell is only the fourth person to receive a prosthetic arm that has three-degrees of movement that is controlled by re-wiring nerves that used to run along the upper limbs, to a muscle on the chest that twitches in response to nerve signals. The muscle twitches are picked up by electrodes placed on the chest, which in turn, controls the prosthetic arm. The prototype is built by the same physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago who built Jesse Sullivan’s arm. The technique for controlling the prostheses has additional difficulties for women due the amount of upper-body fat that rests on the muscles commonly used for this type of research. However, a new surgical technique and better, more sensitive electrodes has limited the potentially disfiguring aspects of the operations required to re-wired the nerves to the upper body muscles. Mitchell will be demonstrating her new limb at a conference in Washington DC later today.