Dr Karthikeyan Kandan and Dr Farukh Farukh
Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues, for example, around one million plastic water bottles are bought every minute yet only 9% are recycled, with the rest leaking into landfill or the ocean.
Furthermore, as of August 23, 2021, the total excess plastic waste generated during the pandemic is calculated as 4.4 to 15.1 million tons due to COVID 19 pandemic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 650 million people worldwide are disabled. Which equates to approximately 10% of the world’s population. Of those people, 80% currently live in LMICs that are often at various stages of economic development depending on active conflict or post conflict
state. Diabetes and traffic accidents are two of the biggest causes of lower-limb amputation – both of which are continuously on the rise.
In LMICs, fewer than 3% of persons with disabilities have access to required rehabilitation services. Without access to the rehabilitation they require, those with disability may become entrenched in a cycle of poverty. Upcycling of recycled plastics and offering affordable prosthesis are two major global issues that we need to tackle. The De Montfort University’s research team led by Dr Kandan developed ARM (Accessible Recycled Material) developed a prosthetic limb that was cost effective yet comfortable and durable for amputee patients. The new design spins recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the building blocks of plastic bottles, into yarns 10 times stronger than bulk plastic.
These yarns were “knitted” into a three-dimensional net-shape preform which exactly matches the patient’s stump. By applying pressure and heat, those preforms were precisely converted into a patient- specific solid yet porous socket which keeps the patient cooler, particularly crucial in the case of diabetic amputees, who often sweat a lot and also for the amputees living in tropical climate. The ARM prosthetic limbs enable a more exact fit around the patient’s stump and reduces the risk of infection because of its breathable design. This is a feature that neither carbon or glass fibre sockets – currently the best designs available – can boast.
ARM prosthetic innovation tackling two problems: turning excess plastic bottle waste into prosthesis for patients in underserved areas. The ARM prosthetic socket technologies provide physical solutions for fabricating fit-for purpose
prosthetic socket which are: accessible, comfortable, reduce fabrication time (days to hours), able to accommodate aging (crucial for limb-deficient child), while also being able 10 to manufacture using local materials and resources.
The research team led by Dr Kandan have won the RAE’s Frontiers Follow-On Funding for a project to further develop Upcycled Plastic Prosthetic limbs for amputees residing in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The principal aim for the project team is to engage in developmental collaborative research between the UK and LMICs to scale-up and translate the success of Accessible Recycled Materials (ARM) Prosthetic Socket (PS) technologies with Majicast – a device to obtain accurate contours of a patient’s residual limbs for achieving tailor made fit that increases comfort and dramatically reduces socket fabrication time.
The ambitious two-year project will engage in networking and collaborative developmental research to consolidate ARM PS technologies with Majicast to engage in patient specific large-scale trials of ARM PSs with Indian amputees
to gather the evidence-base for user-acceptance. At present, large-scale trials have been conducted with Indian amputees.
The project team actively engaged with wider audiences such as academics, NGOs and general public and presented the outcome of the project at the following key events: The project team organised a special symposium entitled ‘Prosthetics for Low-and-Middle- Income Countries (LMICs): Challenges and Opportunities’ at the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) 18th World Congress, 1-4 November 2021.
The project team successfully showcased Upcycled Plastic Prosthetics at Dubai Expo 2020 on the 27th of January 2022. This event was organised by the UK’s Department for International Trade at the UK pavilion at Dubai Expo
2020.