why can’t people in wheelchairs get prosthetic legs to help them walk again? I just saw a video of someone go from a wheelchair to prosthetics and was wondering why more people can’t do this
In: Biology
I am not an amputee, but I am in a wheelchair and know a lot of wheelchair users, this is just my opinion. Not sure exactly which video you watched, but most prosthetics that replace amputated limbs need some motor function below the waist to move the joint that was replaced. For instance, if you have an above the knee amputation, you can use your hip to actuate the knee joint. The hip moves the leg that allows the artificial knee joint to bend and swing. So if you can’t move or control your hip, it is difficult to use a prosthesis to walk without some other form of walking aid like a walker. When you have no lower limb control, you can use external braces to support your weight, but balance and movement are much more difficult and the likelihood of falling is pretty high. Much easier and safer to use a chair.
People aren’t just in wheelchairs for leg problems. Someone with an broken spinal cord will be completely unable to control their legs/prosthetics to begin with. There’s no doubt a million different cases and conditions I haven’t heard of that aren’t in someone’s legs but still manifest as them being unable to walk.
Unfortunately, good prosthetics are also expensive – you have to get them fitted, and they have to be made of biologically unreactive materials (that one’s not in itself too much of a price issue, unless the whole thing is made of titanium), they have to be light but strong, it’s a whole thing. To a certain extent (ignoring hire fees and whatever other garbage exists in the system), you can just dump someone in a wheelchair and turn your focus to more immediate medical fees. This may be the short term option, or for particularly problematic conditions, payments for repeated medication and treatment.
I’m not a doctor, but different people end up in wheelchairs for different reasons. If someone has both limbs, but has extensive nerve damage, then prosthetics might not be enough to help them become mobile.
In addition to this, the cost associated with having prosthetics created for you is not a cost that many people around the world have funds to cover.
There are different degrees of paraplegia. It really depends where the injury/defect is. Some people have the neural capacity to move their legs a certain amount, so prosthetics make sense. Some people don’t have the neural capacity to move their legs at all, so they wouldn’t even be able to move the prosthetic leg and it would be useless
Imagine you’re paralyzed from the waist down…
Imagine someone cuts off your legs and gave you prosthetic legs… Now you’re still paralyzed from the waist down but have fake legs. Nothing has changed and you still cannot walk.
It really is going to boil down to why they are in the wheelchair in the first place. Most times it’s not something that a prosthetic limb will fix.
Latest Answers