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♪ KU choral chant ♪
Kevin: My name is Kevin Colbert.
I'm a bioengineering student.
Amputees wearing conventional prosthesis generally exhibit
problems with skin soreness and skin irritation and the fact
that it limits the amount of time they can walk and the
distance that they can walk is pretty debilitating towards
their lifestyle.
This is all lower limb, generally traumatic,
and above-knee amputees.
What we're working on is an animal model to show the
advantages of a transcutaneous osseointegrated prosthetic and
those are just fancy words meaning through the skin,
anchored into the bone.
After you put that device into their bone and it's always
protruding through the skin, then you can attach an
exoprosthesis to the outside of that.
It completely eliminates all skin problems with prosthetics
which are one of the big disadvantages to prosthesis.
So there's inherent advantages with it.
It allows you to wear it non-stop everyday.
It also allows a greater range of motion.
Unfortunately with that also comes an inherent
infection risk.
So we're working to decrease that infection risk because you
always have basically an open stoma, or an open wound, that
can be infected with bacteria.
There's only a limited number of universities around
the U.S. that are pursuing
this type of research so right there that
gives KU kind of a head start in the area.
I've enjoyed working at the Med Center because there's a lot
of interaction with surgeons and sales staff and it's a full
blown hospital so you get to see a lot that you maybe
wouldn't on this home campus.