Austria: Bionic Reconstruction Gives Men First Prosthetic Hands Controlled by Mind
February 26th, 2015Via: Guardian:
Three Austrians have had their injured hands replaced with bionic ones that they can control using nerves and muscles transplanted into their arms from their legs.
The three men are the first to undergo what doctors refer to as “bionic reconstruction”, which involves a voluntary amputation, the transplantof nerves and muscles and learning to use faint signals from them to command the hand.
People with bionic hands have in the past controlled them primarily with manual settings.
“This is the first time we have bionically reconstructed a hand,” said Dr Oskar Aszmann, of the Medical University of Vienna, who developed the approach with colleagues. “If I saw these kinds of patients five to seven years ago, I would have just shrugged my shoulders and said ‘there’s nothing I can do for you.’”
He said the procedure had its complications, including the need for patients to take anti-rejection medicines for the rest of their lives.
Aszmann and his colleagues described the cases of the three men in a report published in the online version of the Lancet on Wednesday. The men decided on amputation after having the bionic hand strapped on to their injured hand, to see how it might function.
