Page 20 - UD Research Magazine Vol5-No1

In many ways, their needs are different than the typical civilian population, in part because of their younger ages, severity of injury and their activity levels prior to getting hurt.
Marilynn Wyatt, a BADER-funded researcher and director of the Gait Analysis Laboratory at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif., said many
of these patients have high expectations
of what they’ll be able to do once they’ve been fitted with a prosthesis. But returning to an active lifestyle is not always that easy.
“They were in great shape and athletes when they were injured,” said Wyatt. “Once they’re put back together orthopedically, they want to do high-functioning activities. They accomplish walking early on in their rehabilitation. They want to do more.”
These kinds of projects are asking ques- tions that haven’t previously been con- sidered in prosthetics research, Stanhope said. Rather than assuming a patient will be happy reaching some kind of basic function with their prosthetic device, these researchers are looking at how this technology can be used to improve athletic ability—perhaps in helping someone reach even higher functional levels than expect- ed—or reduce their risk of future injury.
Research also is needed to learn more about the long-term impact of a prosthe-
sis on the rest of the body, particularly
as these devices become more advanced, said Alena Grabowski, a BADER-funded researcher at the University of Colorado who is looking at the stiffness and height of running prostheses.
“There’s a lot more going on in an intact limb than a prosthesis. It’s very challenging comparing apples and oranges,” she said. “As scientists, we’re trying to understand both.”
Assisting military treatment facilities in transforming care
Stanhope said the BADER Consor- tium builds on UD’s solid foundation in biomechanics and rehabilitation while leveraging relationships with other national experts to create a framework supporting orthopedic research with the potential to transform care for patients with limb differences.
Housed within BADER are several cores that provide administrative, clinical research and scientific assistance to mili- tary treatment centers and affiliates. The administrative core is similar to the one found in the Delaware INBRE program, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to enhance the region’s biomedical research capability.
It’s a program Stanhope knows well— he worked at NIH for 22 years and now di- rects the Delaware INBRE program, which recently received a $23.2 million renewal.
“It was a matter of marrying that NIH model system with the world-class status of the UD biomechanics and movement science program,” he said. “We wanted to create something like that for the DOD.”
In addition, BADER also includes a clinical research core with UD employees who are located on-site to support and assist with the research going on at the partici- pating military treatment facilities—Naval Medical Center San Diego in California, San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Virginia and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.
The consortium was the first in the na- tion to partner with the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to use its clinical trials database outside the confines of the federal agency. The BADER Clinical Trials Database, or CTDB, mirrors the NIH database—though it operates externally—and offers affiliates an opportu- nity to access a controlled central reposi- tory of data. It can be used for multi-site protocols or individual research teams and is protected by a secure firewall.
18 | UD RESEARCH
H BY THE NUMBERS
H
$8.3
BILLION
Annual hospital costs associated with amputation. — Amputee Coalition of America
COST PROJECTIONS
$45,563 The average cost projection for a veteran with an above-
the-knee amputation.
— The Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development
16.5%
Of soldiers with amputations return to active duty.
— The Journal of Trauma
2 People are living with limb loss in the United States.
— Amputee Coalition of America
MILLION