Technology and health care : official journal of the European Society for Engineering and Medicine
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Technol Health Care · Jan 2014
PMMA-augmentation of incompletely cannulated pedicle screws: a cadaver study to determine the benefits in the osteoporotic spine.
Pedicle screw pullout due to poor bone quality, mainly caused by osteoporosis, is a common problem in spine surgery. Special implants and techniques, especially PMMA augmentation, were developed to improve the fixation of pedicle screws. PMMA injection into a pilot hole or through a screw involves the same risks as vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty, regardless of the technique used. Especially when using fully cannulated screws anterior leakage is possible. ⋯ We minimized the risk of leakage by using a screw with a closed tip. On the whole, PMMA augmentation through an incompletely cannulated pedicle screw is safe and increases pullout forces in osteoporotic bone to the level of healthy bone. Therefore the new incompletely cannulated screw can be used for pedicle screw augmentation.
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Technol Health Care · Jan 2014
Nonlinearities in personalization-privacy paradox in mHealth adoption: the mediating role of perceived usefulness and attitude.
Personalization in healthcare refers to individualizing services and products based on patients' health conditions and interests. In order to deliver highly personalized offerings, mHealth providers need to use patients' health information, which provokes patients' concerns over personal health information leakage. So the personalization-privacy paradox is an important issue in the mHealth context. To gain a better understanding of this paradox, we take the personalization and privacy paradox factors as independent variables, incorporating the nonlinear relationships between personalization and privacy, and take attitude and perceived usefulness as middle variables to study mHealth adoption. ⋯ (1) Personalization and privacy are found to influence mHealth adoption intention via attitude and perceived usefulness; (2) there is a substitution relationship, also called negative synergy between personalization and privacy in mHealth contexts; (3) attitude mediates the effect of perceived usefulness on intention, indicating a significant role of attitude.
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Technol Health Care · Jan 2014
A study on difference and importance of sacral slope and pelvic sacral angle that affect lumbar curvature.
Individual pelvic sacral angle was measured, compared and analyzed for the 6 male and female adults who were diagnosed with lumbar spinal stenosis, foraminal stenosis and mild spondylolisthesis in accordance with spinal parameters, pelvic parameters and occlusion state of sacroiliac joint presented by the author of this thesis based on the fact that the degree of lumbar excessive lordosis that was one of the causes for lumbar pain was determined by sacral slope. The measured values were compared with the standard values of the average normal range from 20 s to 40 s of normal Koreans stated in the study on the change in lumbar lordosis angle, lumbosacral angle and sacral slope in accordance with the age by Oh et al. [5] and sacral slope and pelvic sacral slope of each individual of the subjects for measurement were compared. Comparing the difference between the two tilt angles possessed by an individual is a comparison to determine how much the sacroiliac joint connecting pelvis and sacral vertebrae compensated and corrected the sacral vertebrae slope by pelvic tilt under the condition of synarthrodial joint. ⋯ It is believed that this is because the pelvic sacral slope maintaining an angle that is slightly greater than the normal range by being located in the lowest end of spine considering that the compensation for pelvic tilt, in other words, pelvic limb is not much causes an excess of lumbar lordosis angle. The meaning of this study based on these results is to prove that PSA is one of the important factors that fundamentally determine lumbar curvature. And this is because it is definitely required to have a study on the guideline for appropriate posture and life habit to the maintenance and management of ideal PSA before the end of growth phase and also the exercise therapy and adjustment for the control of PSA.
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Technol Health Care · Jan 2014
Effects of motor-level transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation on ipsilateral and un-stimulated contralateral quadriceps femoris.
There is a paucity of data on effects of motor-level stimulation using Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator (TENS) on ipsilateral quadriceps femoris group of muscles. The effect is also unknown on the untrained contralateral quadriceps femoris. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effect of TENS on quadriceps muscle strength at the stimulated ipsilateral and un-stimulated contra-lateral extremities. ⋯ We concluded that there were increments in both strength and muscle size of the stimulated right quadriceps using motor level stimulation parameters of TENS modality. The un-stimulated contralateral quadriceps strength also increased after 8 weeks. This implied that there was cross-training effect at the contralateral quadriceps group of muscles.
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Technol Health Care · Jan 2014
Comparative StudyAn investigation into the perceptual embodiment of an artificial hand using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in intact-limbed individuals.
Perceptual embodiment of an artificial limb aids manual control of prostheses and can be facilitated by somatosensory feedback. We hypothesised that transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) may facilitate perceptual embodiment of artificial limbs. ⋯ A sensation of TENS was generated within the artificial hand in individuals with intact limbs and this facilitated perceptual embodiment. The magnitude of effect was modest.