Metamorphosis of Compression Therapy

Exciting wearable from Anatomech

Anatomech's exciting new innovation is in bionic wearable technology. Its products help enhance human body movement.

Their new product - Kue bionic sleeve is made to provide compression therapy with ease. It is built to provide lifelong management for lymphedema.
In lymphedema, there is fluid stagnation in the body. This leads to abnormal limb volume
and an increased risk of infection. Its diagnosis comes with a lifetime requirement for 
self-care and treatment to control skin deterioration. The burden of care,
physical disfiguration, and loss of function are associated with compromised quality
of life.
Anatomech's easy wearable helps patients evade complex self-care (like lymphatic massage/drainage) and disease complications by providing appropriate compression therapy.
The kue sleeve also has features such as -

• Graduated, sequential pressure application
• Has a pre-calibrated pressure range of 30-70 mm of Hg ideal for lymphatic drainage.
• Additionally, it’s snug, portable, and lightweight

Though built for lymphedema the Kue sleeve has a multitude of uses in medical, sports, etc.

Need for compression therapy

Chronic conditions, such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, orthostatic hypotension, and chronic venous insufficiency are just some diseases that have sustained compression therapy as an integral part of their treatment.

Intermittent compression is also widely used to prevent blood loss (e.g., tourniquets), stabilize joints (e.g., knee braces), and prevent lower body blood pooling in extreme gravitational environments. 

Sportswear with moderate compression distribution is popular in athletics and fitness activities. It is used to enhance the performance of athletes, decrease the possibility of injury, and accelerate the process of recovery.

The science behind Compression Garments

The pressure performance of a compression garment influences the energy, work efficiency, and health of the wearer. Insufficient pressure will limit efficacy. Too high a pressure will cause numbness to the body part, breathing difficulty, and other serious damage to health. Apart from pressure performance, physical characteristics\ like air permeability, heat, moisture transmission, and tactile characteristics influence the comfort of compression garments.

Compression garments generally manipulate interstitial pressures through externally applied circumferential forces to provide compression therapy.

There are static and dynamic compression garments.

Static compression garments, (eg. stockings, tights, socks, etc.) are passive garments that apply circumferential pressure by wrapping or stretching textiles around a body’s circumference.
Dynamic and intermittent compression modalities are larger apparatuses that include external pneumatic compressors. These devices accomplish circumferential compression through garment volume increase upon inflation.

Even though static compression garments are cost-effective, the use of dynamic compression garments is rising - as healthcare increasingly shifts to at-home therapies. The rising need for accessible and mobile compression therapy in combination with the stagnation of available compression therapy technologies - inspires innovation.

New medical compression technologies that are low-profile, facile to don, and dynamic—applying medical compression only when needed—can expand the use of wearable compression, increase patient compliance, and lead to better outcomes.

Innovations in compression garments

Active materials offer a compelling approach to the development of new wearable compression technologies. Active materials are energy-dense materials. They undergo a change in physical property in response to material-specific external stimuli (e.g. light, pH, applied voltage, etc). They physically change shape in response to stimulus, allowing them to function as mechanical actuators. These active material-based actuators produce controllable and reversible stiffness, enabling a wide range of applications.

Further, if the active material is wrapped around the body volume and length change is prohibited, stimulus-induced changes to the device's stiffness are translated into a compressive force around the body volume. Therefore, controllable changes in an active material's stiffness properties can produce controllable tuning of compressive pressure around a body circumference either with or without an increase in device volume.

Conclusion

The challenge, for the research of compression garments, is the pressure prediction and variation during the wearing.

The ongoing work for newer compression garments demonstrates a roadmap for developing wearable systems that can accommodate a range of users without sacrificing system performance. For better wearing instruction of compression garments, the pressure criteria for specific body parts, real-time pressure display, and overpressure warning are the research direction.

Reference

https://www.anatomech.co/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/admt.202200467

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