Braided pneumatic artificial muscles, and in particular the better known type with a double helical braid usually called the McKibben muscle, seem to be at present the best means for motorizing robotarms with artificial muscles. Their ability to develop high maximum force associated with lightness and a compact cylindrical shape, as well as their analogical behavior with natural skeletal muscle...

The tourniquet has been used for over 300 years for effective hemorrhage control during surgery and trauma. However, tourniquets are far from benign, causing a host of complications collectively known as tourniquet injury. A tremendous body of clinical experience and scientific research has resulted in principles of safe use and advances in tourniquet design, minimizing tourniquet injury under ...

Some solutions, as the administration of antifibrinolytic drugs (tranexamic acid), have been proposed to reduce the bleeding on a TKR surgery and to decrease the number of transfusions. Hyperfibrinolysis is considered being the major cause of postoperative bleeding after TKA surgery [10-14], the fibrinolytic system is activated in the first hours after surgery increasing the postoperative bleed...

Hard Exoskeletons and arm actuators have already been designed and available in industry but they are expensive, heavy and cumbersome so to reduce these drawbacks a low cost lightweight intelligent arm actuator has been designed, constructed and evaluated. It consists of a pneumatic artificial muscle, constructed using a football bladder and covered by parachute material to limit its expansion....

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive method of quantifying changes in cerebral haemodynamics from changes in the absorption of near-infrared light by oxyhaemoglobin and deoxyhaemoglobin. Measurement of neonatal cerebral blood volume (CBV) by NIRS was described in 1990 but it has been suggested that, in adults, scalp and skull blood content contribute a significant amount to the ce...

Distributions of tissue fluid pressure were examined beneath a standard pneumatic tourniquet in six upper extremities and six lower extremities of fresh human cadavera, disarticulated at the shoulder and hip, respectively. A standard 8-cm-wide tourniquet cuff was applied at mid-humerus or mid-femur position. Tissue fluid pressures were measured by 100-cm-long slit catheters inserted parallel to...

PURPOSE To compare the thrombosis markers for thrombosis and fibrinolysis in patients undergoing hip versus knee arthroplasty. METHODS Seven women aged 38 to 61 years who underwent total hip arthroplasty (THA) and 7 women aged 57 to 67 years who underwent total knee arthroplasty (TKA) were studied. Thromboprophylaxis was given before and after surgery. In patients undergoing TKA, an automatic...

Abstract Aim Pneumatic tourniquets are used in Trauma & Orthopaedic (T&O) surgery to provide a bloodless field. Their use can give rise preventable complications. British Association Standards for and Orthopaedics (BOAST) 2021 guidelines aim improve tourniquet safety, highlighting strict documentation pressure based on intra-operative blood pressure. We evaluated elective T&O surger...