Printing a static progressive orthosis for hand rehabilitation

Static progressive orthosis is used for the treatment of severe joint contracture after trauma and/or surgery. However, a custom-fabricated static progressive splint would be expensive and labor intensive. Especially, owing to very limited payment under the current Taiwanese National Health Insurance, the incentives to fabricate a patient-specific splint are insufficient for a therapist. To ease splint construction, we introduced three-dimensional (3D)-printed "shark fin"-shaped device works as a static progressive orthosis for the hand rehabilitation. The aim of this study was to describe and demonstrate the newly designed device.

This study included a 46-year male suffered from a left distal radius fracture and underwent open reduction internal fixation and a 23-year male with the right thumb flexor pollicis longus rupture, requiring tendon repair. Both subjects used this "shark fin"-shaped device to stretch for increasing range of motion (ROM) of wrist extension and the thumb.

The patient receiving ulnar shortening surgery used this device to stretch for increasing ROM of wrist extension. The active ROM of wrist extension improved from 30° to 50°. The other patient with the right thumb flexor pollicis longus rupture suffered from thumb contracture; the ROMs of the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint and interphalangeal (IP) joint were 40°-55° and 20°-25°, respectively. After tenolysis surgery, his ROMs of the MCP and IP joints were improved to 10°-35° and 40°-65°, respectively. Following physical therapy by applying the device, his ROMs of the MCP and IP joints were further increased to 0°-40° and 25°-70°, respectively.

Incorporating the "shark fin"-shaped orthosis into hand rehabilitation increased the ROM of wrist extension for a patient with distal radius fracture and improved the ROM of the MCP and IP joints in another patient after tenolysis surgery.