Wounded Warrior Hip disartic Power Knee

This month we had the pleasure of working with Jay, who is a wounded warrior. He was hit with an IED while traveling in his armored Hum-v. The projectile took off Jay’s leg at the hip, making the use of a prosthesis difficult since he has to manipulate both an artificial hip and knee joint. Over the last few years, Jay has worked hard to obtain a very natural gait in his Helix and C-Leg combination. He came to us requesting to be fit with a Power Knee after seeing how this technology helped another hip disartic friend of his walk with less effort. The power knee uses sensors and motors to actively move the prosthetic knee during different phases of gait to reduce the energy needed to use the prosthesis.

In order to make the best prosthetic solution for Jay, we pooled together the expertise of Kurt, Ossur’s bionics expert, Kirk, formerly with the CFI, Matt, owner of Bulow BioTech, and Bobby, local CP in Columbia SC. This combination of skillsets led to several socket modifications along with the decision to use the Helix hip and Reflex Rotate foot in combination with the Power Knee. On our initial fitting day, everyone flew in from across the country to focus on Jay’s fitting, and the results were amazing. Over the first two days of Jay’s use of the knee, he walked 5.4 miles. Over the following 3 weeks, he walked 43.9 miles! Overall we see him using less pelvic motion to make the prosthesis work, resulting in less energy consumption compared to his previous setup. Jay loves the comfort of the new socket, and is enjoying using the new prosthetic knee. Just yesterday he went to the Master’s and walked all over the grounds using the Power Knee.

Watch the video below to see the natural ease of his gait, Jay Fain Hip disartic Power Knee