A novel distractive and mobility-enabling lumbar spinal orthosis:

摘要

PurposeLumbar spinal orthoses are often used as non-surgical treatment and serve to support the spine and alleviate low back pain. More recently, dynamic orthoses claiming to decompress the spine have been introduced. A previously developed prototype of dynamic mobility orthosis (DMO1) was designed that provided a distractive load across the lumbar spine but required higher sagittal bending moments and was unable to maintain spinal off-loading throughout extended ranges of movement. The objective was to design a new orthosis (DMO2) that reduced bending moment buildup and sustained spinal off-loading throughout daily living ranges of flexion and extension movement.MethodsA mechanical analog upper torso model and programmable robotic testing platform were used to design features of DMO2: a mobility-enabling component and a distractive force component. Test conditions for DMO2 were 300?N of applied vertical torso load over a range of 25° flexion to 10° extension. Loads carried by the brace were determined th...