Ds. Bain et al., A new method of assessing the mechanical properties of patient support systems (PSS) using a phantom. A preliminary communication, MED ENG PHY, 21(5), 1999, pp. 293-301
Pressure ulcers are a major problem worldwide believed to affect over 5% of
all hospital in-patients, and countless others in the community at large.
Many types of Patient Support Systems (PSS) are sold as pressure ulcer prev
ention equipment, but no consensus exists as to their mechanical efficacy.
The use of human volunteers to assess the mechanical properties of PSS intr
oduces nonrepeatability and variability in results which cannot give a stat
istically significant difference in performance between systems. Mechanical
testing without human volunteers provides faster evaluations of PSS, with
improved precision and repeatability. An instrumented articulated anthropom
etric phantom has been developed to investigate the distortion of simulated
soft body "tissues" of the buttock and sacral areas due to precise and rep
eatable static loading on a PSS. The weight of the phantom can be adjusted
to 50, 70 and 90 kg and can be applied with the torso inclined at 0 degrees
, 45 degrees and 80 degrees. Validation of the phantom by measuring interfa
ce pressure using a force sensing array mat indicates that the phantom repr
esents realistic physiological loading conditions. The new method of measur
ing the distortion of the "artificial tissues" provides a highly selective
ranking of PSS. (C) 1999 IPEM. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All right
s reserved.