How do you make a prosthetic?

When someone comes to any of our 5 centres, they will first be assessed by our multidisciplinary team. Once the evaluation is completed, a decision will be made about the most effective course of action. This might include physiotherapy, surgery, a prosthetic device, or a combination of all three!

If the patient requires any surgery, such as to make the stump suitable for a prosthesis, or to release contracted muscles prior to having an orthosis made, COPE will organize the operation and cover the cost. If further information is required to make the right decision, we will liaise with other organizations. Obviously, every patient poses an entirely new set of difficulties.

Very often, when patients arrive for an assessment they have made an attempt to build their own prosthic. These crudely made substitutes can be made from a number of materials including parts of the ordinance that exploded causing the amputation! We supply several different types of prostheses, depending on which body part is missing, however, the most common is a below knee prosthesis. Needless to say, upon arriving our patients are very happy to find that legs can be specifically made to fit them!

All the prosthetics manufactured by COPE are custom made for the individual in a technical process that requires a tremendous amount of training. Many of our staff have traveled abroad in order to learn their specialized skills.

The building of a prosthesis, or “resdidual limb”, is a time intensive and complex multi-stepped process that involves measuring, injection molding, casting, fitting and making precision adjustments. Each person walks slightly differently so fine-tuning is crucial to make sure the prosthetic limb does not cause any damage to other joints, such as the knee (for a below knee amputee), hip or back.

Once the prosthetist/orthotist is happy with the fit and the alignment of the device process has only begun, next is training the patient for adaptation which usually takes a minimum of three weeks to a month. The training and rehabilitation is finished when the patient can complete and on-site obstacle course which includes stairs, ramps, gravel, and even a suspended bridge!

Feet are also made in our rehabilitation centre in Vientiane, by compressing rubber in a press and then heating it up to vulcanise it The piece which joins the foot to the prosthesis is known as the keel, which is also made from recycled polypropylene left over from the manufacturing process..