Good morning everyone!
Happy November!! To start this blog off, let’s start with a little joke. “What does Thanksgiving have in common with Halloween?”
GOBBLE-INS!!!!
Hahahaha. I thought that was a perfect little way to start. Anyway, let’s see…I hope everyone is doing well and that you all have had a good start to the month. We have been busy here over at IIOP.
Our lovely patient models, David, Dave, and Taylor came in and helped us out with our ischial containment sockets! We casted them, fabricated check sockets (fit and adjusted those), and finally got to laminate their definitive sockets! It was a pretty busy week and we all were exhausted, but it was well worth it! For our definitive socket fittings, our good pals from Blatchford, David, Mike, and Steve, came in and showed us a few of their amazing knees and feet! On Thursday, we were able to fit our patient models with the Linx system and Orion 3 knee with the Echelon hydraulic ankle! It was amazing because we were able to gain some valuable insight on how to properly bench align and calibrate their products! On Friday, our Blatchford pals and patient models came back and we got to have some more fun. We fit our definitive sockets with Blatchford’s KXO6 (polycentric) knee and their Mercury hydraulic (single axis) knee. My class and I really appreciated Blatchford for taking the time to come teach and help us out for a couple of days!! We learned so much and had a great time.
Finishing up my updates, we had our patient models return to help us this past week with our CAD-CAM ischial containment sockets. We used our VX Element scanner to capture the shape of the patient’s residual limb. Their scans were then synced into the Omega WillowWood software where we were able to modify their scans. Next, we uploaded the modified scans to our Provel C7 carver and created a positive foam model which we used to pull our plastic to create their check socket. We used this method in place of casting our patients with plaster…just another tool we get to put in our growing toolbox!! These scans can be used in the future to create other devices such as cranial helmets, scoliosis braces, and various sockets!! We will be fitting our patients on Monday before concluding our transfemoral class.
That is all for now! Have a wonderful rest of your week and we will chat soon.
Signing off,
Fran Cicchetti
