Rehabilitation and Therapy Commons^™

A System For Monitoring Pressures And Spinal Curvature In Spinally Injured People Immobilised On A Spinal Raft, Ruairí De Fréin, Eoin Flinn, Ted Burke

Articles

We present a system designed to study the pressure at various ‘hot spots’ on the back of the body and the deformation of the spine experienced by a patient when strapped to a spinal board, and the potential alleviation of both by the addition of an inflatable “spinal raft” (or other similar device). In measuring pressure we devised a system of air-filled sacks interfaced with a PC. Each sack, placed under a particular key point on the body, is inflated until its faces just begin to separate and a switch thereby opens. The pressure reading is then captured and displayed …