Lack of feeling is big challenge

ONE of the biggest challenges for people fitted with prosthetic limbs is getting used to the absence of a sense of feeling, an Irish medical expert said yesterday.

Dr Nicola Ryall, a consultant in rehabilitation medicine and director of the National Prosthetic Service at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin, said co-ordination is affected because of the loss of sensation.

And, said Dr Ryall, up to now, efforts made to develop prosthetics with a sensory feedback had not been very successful.

“That is why it is so exciting that doctors have now succeeded in giving back a sense of feeling to a woman fitted with the world’s first ‘bionic arm’.”