[A physical restraint device to facilitate rehabilitation in critically ill patients]

Physical restraints are widely used in hospitalized and critically ill patients, especially in intensive care unit (ICU), to prevent adverse events such as the accidental removal of various monitoring leads, therapeutic tubes, and self-injury or injury to others due to delirium and irritation. The existing restraint measures directly bind the upper limbs of the patients to the hospital bed, which often brings psychological harm to the patients and leads to disuse muscular atrophy. Early rehabilitation therapy can help improve the prognosis of patients,but it is difficult to be widely used in ICU due to being heavily dependent on nursing and rehabilitation physicians. A novel restraint device to facilitate rehabilitation training for critically ill patients was designed by the medical staff from the department of critical care medicine of Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University and obtained the National Utility Model Patent of China (ZL 2020 2 2492749.6). The device is mainly composed of a cross beam and a locking device whose two ends are connected by a rocker arm, an upper limb stopper and an upper body stopper. The upper limb and body restraint provide restrictions on the movement of the head, the upper limb, and the upper body. The angle limiter prevents the patient from pulling out the treatment tube by himself, and at the same time retains the ability to grasp the crossbar and rotate it, and the sliding block further increases the activity space, to meet the exercise of the patient's upper limb muscle strength. Carrying out physical rehabilitation training as early as possible during ICU treatment can relieve the patient's resistance to passive restraint, reduce the incidence of disuse muscle atrophy, eliminate the potential hidden dangers of medical disputes, and ultimately improve the prognosis of patients.