Prostheses: Auxiliary means with hand and foot

Whether it’s discreetly thanks to a skin-toned look or in an eye-catching way owing to technical details – the way people wear prosthetic devices today depends on their wishes and preferences. Due to modern manufacturing processes and ever higher design standards, for many, they have become a way to express a lifestyle they increasingly want to communicate.

The human hand is more complex than it looks. 33 muscles control every movement and ensure a strong grip or handshake. What’s more, our fingertips have different receptors that play an important part in how we perceive surfaces, temperature or pain. The Karlsruhe-based VINCENT Systems Company develops prosthetic hands that raise the bar for prosthetics. This prosthetic device is light-weight, based on the anatomical features of a natural hand and offers a wide variety of functions as well as an artificial sense of touch.

Imagine you are on a beach vacation and witness how a shark bites into the leg of a person. But the person doesn’t scream! That might be because the shark is part of the person’s prosthetic leg. Admittedly, it’s a very unusual and unique prosthetic device but that’s how the orthopedic technician Frank Purk from Hamburg, Germany, like to call attention to the design of artificial limbs.