Page 30 - Mobility Management, February 2017

ATP Series
Pressure Injuries
Continued from page 25
nurse or to her tablet, seconds or fractions of seconds after she takes the measurements — that’s huge. It’s not only the ability to visualize and provide the image of what’s happening in the body, but it’s also the computer being able to tell you: That’s normal.
Brienza: The other piece to this is once you understand the characteristics of the person and you can model it, then you can simulate interactions with external devices, like cushions, and start to predict how someone is going to perform when they sit on a cushion and how the characteristics of that cushion may change
We weren’t looking to see whether ultrasound did the same thing as MRI, because
it doesn’t — David Brienza
how the person is being affected and how their tissues are being affected. We do know that tissues deform differently when people sit on cushions with different characteristics, so we can use that information to choose, if you will, the best cushion based on the personal characteristics and the characteristics of the cushion.
These measurements that we’re talking about get even more difficult when you’re talking about a loaded situation. The ultrasound measurement we’re making now is of someone lying on their side [with] their buttocks exposed. It gets much more difficult when you try to take measurements while forces are being applied.
If we can parameterize the model of the person and then apply that to a cushion, we can predict how well that cushion is going to protect that person and their tissues from harmful deformation.
It’s a combination of general knowledge and population information with specific risk information to arrive at the best solutions.
Q: How Does the Research Move Forward from Here?
Mobility Management: Given what you’ve learned, will you continue to study these technologies and to advance what you’ve discovered?
Kopplin: We are doing MRI assessments with Dr. Brienza’s team to further understand the differences in anatomy, how different people’s structures are and how that translates into that internal tissue stress and risk that Amit and his team will be analyzing. We are advancing the research to better understand the role that cushions, wheelchairs, positioning, and protocols can play in ensuring the best outcomes for wheelchair users, which is exciting.
Gefen: We are basically laying the foundations for technolo- gies, either building upon existing or new technologies that will
30 february 2017 | mobilitymanagement
aid clinicians in doing their daily risk assessments with patients in a world that has currently seen no technology at all in those aspects. It’s now only based on nurses’ skills, experience, some- times subjective impressions that she may have when a patient
is admitted to the facility. We’re offering a thoroughly different, revolutionary, bioengineering approach based on technology and solid evidence that will change the world as we know it today and as related to risk assessment. That’s a fundamental point
to emphasize. It’s not just the fact that we took ultrasound and compared it to an MRI. That’s the technical aspect of it. The important aspect of it is that introduced technology to a field which is virgin in that aspect.
Brienza: We were trying to take down that barrier that was between utilizing that knowledge that’s been generated over
10 or 15 years and applying that in the clinic. There was this barrier that we couldn’t make the measurements. So by assessing whether ultrasound can make those measurements, it takes that barrier down.
Gefen: We translate the basic science that we have done and the findings that were supported by sophisticated, expensive imaging like MRI, and with ultrasound, we are translating that into the clinic and to the bedside. l
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