Final Blog

I really liked most of the projects. I did mine on osseointegrated prosthetics. It is essentially a prosthetic that is made by inserting a titanium fixture into the bone. The bone then grows into the titanium so it is secure. An abutment is then inserted into the fixture where you put the prosthetic on from there.

There are many advantages to osseointegration including no skin irritation, etc. I think that the most important advantage though is how weight is distributed when wearing the prosthetic. In normal prosthetics you don't have as much freedom in terms of shifting your weight on the prosthetic. Since the titanium and prosthetic are essentially new limbs that are part of the body, the prosthetic can hold a lot more weight.

Osseointegration originated on teeth and now people are starting to use it for mainly legs. Pets are starting to get the surgery also!

I think the best presentation was actually DJ's osseointegration and artificial limb presentation. He has such a depth of knowledge about the subject of prosthetics, his poster was very professional, his fixture and abutment models were great, and the limb that he brought was really cool.

The tweeting was cool because I saw that people agreed with me over which technologies were the most interesting and giving people props for how hard they worked on it.

The project in general was a lot of fun just because we are essentially looking into the future when we're studying these technologies. I wonder if there will ever be a limit to these technologies?