Page 20 - Mobility Management, September 2018

Pediatric Series
The Measure of a Child
Pediatric Anthropometrics & Their Impact on Wheelchair Design
hildren are not just smaller versions of adults — a vital truth that seating and mobility manufacturers need to consider when designing any optimal pediatric seating or mobility system.
A 1998 report by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine noted that infants and children “differ structurally from the adult in a number of ways,” and added that infants and children also differ from each other: “Body size proportions, muscle bone and ligamentrus strengths are different,” the study noted.
Consider the proportions of an infant: At birth, its head is very large compared to the baby’s overall length. A baby’s head grows, but not as quickly or as much as the rest of the baby’s body. Therefore, by the time that baby is a toddler, his head-to-body proportions have changed. And that ratio continues to evolve as the child grows. When a typically developing child reaches adulthood, his head length-to-body length ratio is very different than when he was born.
Imagine, then, the problems that can arise if an adult wheelchair or seating system is simply “shrunken” to accommodate a child’s or infant’s height.
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BABY IMAGE: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/HANNESEICHINGER