Infants and children require a specialized approach to their prosthetic or orthotic care. Limited communication skills, combined with rapid rates of physical growth, mean that pediatric patients require more frequent office visits and more careful observation of their progress from month to month.
Infants and children depend on their parents and their prosthetic/orthotic providers to patiently take care of their needs during these growing years. Prosthetic patients between the ages of birth and about 18 years will require a new socket and other prosthetic modifications at least once a year and should be evaluated by their practitioner every six months, with careful monitoring by a parent in between visits. Orthotic patients face the same challenge of rapidly outgrowing their brace or support; they too require close observation and they may potentially need to modify their device twice a year. Because every child is different, there is no standard timetable for re-fittings to accommodate growth. Some children will need more frequent clinical visits due to sudden growth spurts.
One of the ways Hanger has made the fitting process easier for pediatric patients is with Insignia™, a three-dimensional laser scanning system. Insignia makes it easy to measure and fit pediatric patients for a brace, support or prosthetic socket. With a hand-held scanner and a computer, your practitioner can capture and store 3-D images of the effected area and then use these to cast the brace, support, or prosthetic socket. Insignia images are exact to within one millimeter and the scanning process is quick, easy, and painless. There may be some circumstances where your practitioner prefers to do a traditional cast of the affected area using plaster or another malleable material.