Page 16 - Mobility Management, January 2018

ATP Series
Material Advances
How Does Carbon Fiber Measure Up Among Ultralightweight Choices?
By Laurie Watanabe
ach August, Beloit College in Beloit, Wisc., distributes a new Mindset List, a collection of facts describing the perspectives and experiences of the incoming freshman class. Initially, the list was meant to help professors make more relevant references when
communicating with their young students — for instance, the Mindset List notes that for students starting college this year, The Daily Show has always existed; nicotine has always been known as an addictive drug regulated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration; and Hong Kong has always been part of China. But the List has become popular even among those far removed from their college days, because the factoids serve as a way to measure time and marvel at how things have changed.
Veterans of the complex rehab technology (CRT) industry — including those who remember when it wasn’t called CRT — can mark mobility milestones in a similar manner. For instance, CRT professionals currently serve clients with Post-polio syndrome, and those end users might have pushed steel-framed manual wheelchairs once upon a time.
Today’s self-propelled manual wheelchairs include ultralightweight (K0005) versions that seem only distantly related to those heavy steel behemoths. The ultralightweight segment has bene ted from several space-age material advances, from high-quality aluminum used in aircraft and spacecraft to titanium and increasingly, to carbon ber.
Which always raises the question: For ultralightweight chairs, which one is best?
16 JANUARY2018|MOBILITYMANAGEMENT MobilityMgmt.com
CARBON FIBER: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/TIERO