US veterans have helped to advance prosthetic research since the Civil War, when amputee soldier James Hanger patented his groundbreaking prosthesis. That tradition remains as strong as ever. Here are five 21st-century innovations that originated in the Department of Veterans Affairs or Department of Defense, with testing and input from ordinary servicemembers.
Osseointegration
Beginning in December 2015, the VA center in Salt Lake City kicked off the first US clinical trial of bone-anchored prosthetic limbs, better known as osseointegration. Army veterans Bryant Jacobs and Ed Salau were the first of ten amputee vets to undergo this procedure. Subsequent clinical trials at Walter Reed Medical Center and other VA facilities helped pave the way for full FDA approval of OI in 2020.
Mobile Prosthetic Clinics
In 2018 the VA’s Center for Limb Loss and Mobility launched one of the nation’s first mobile prosthetic clinics. Using specialized vehicles equipped with facilities for prosthetic fitting, adjustment, alignment, and other routine care, the initiative allows VA prosthetists to serve veterans who can’t easily travel to a conventional clinic. The VA now operates mobile clinics in more than a dozen states, and dozens more are operated by private-sector prosthetic companies.
Women’s Prosthetics
The VA made female-friendly prosthetic devices a research priority in 2017. Over the next five years it spent millions of dollars on multiple studies to learn how women’s prosthetic needs and wants differed from men’s, then used those findings to develop and test new technology. The initiative yielded prosthetic feet that could be worn with high heels and other fashionable shoes, prosthetic hands with fingers scaled to a woman’s body, assistive devices for female amputees with small children to carry, and other technology.
Bionic Arms
Amputee veterans spent nearly a decade helping to test and refine the DEKA arm. It was the first upper-limb prosthesis capable of performing multiple powered movements simultaneously, and one of the first to feature multiple preprogrammed grip patterns. After undergoing extensive clinical research at multiple VA facilities, the device reached the general marketplace in 2017 as the LUKE arm. The first recipients, fittingly, were Army veterans Fred Downs and Artie McAuley.
Powered Joints
Amputee veterans were among the first beta-testers of the BiOM foot-ankle, the groundbreaking powered-joint prosthesis Hugh Herr developed at MIT. Beginning in 2007, Herr collaborated with the VA to fund his research, develop prototypes, and gather clinical data. When the BiOM became commercially available in the mid-2010s, the VA bought several hundred units for military patients. Its popularity among veterans encouraged Ottobock to acquire the technology and rebrand it as the Empower ankle.
