Therapeutic Device For Treatment Of Low Back Pain

Therapeutic Device For Treatment Of Low Back Pain

Vu, T.T.

Goossens, R. (mentor)
Hajian, M. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2013-08-27

This report discusses on the development of a new therapeutic device for treatment of low back pain, which was initiated by Enraf-Nonious B.V - one of a leading company in the field of physiotherapy and rehabilitation. Low back pain is a common source of musculoskeletal complaints and has been known to affects the daily life of many people. The problems at the low back, however, are only the tip of the iceberg, whereby there exist great variations of underlying causes and mechanisms. Due to the complexity of the symptom, treatment of low back pain remains a topic of active debates among the physicians, in which the therapists tend to employ different styles and methods for diagnosing and designing the treatment programme. The current project explores on the potential benefit of passive mobilization in treatment of the low back, as well as on the selective techniques that are commonly used in the course of mobilization. The research findings identified back rotation and flexion/extension as among the simplest and most beneficial movements in passive mobilizations, due to which the techniques were selected to be incorporated in the new designs. As the first experimental step towards a new line of automotive therapeutic devices, this project would not look into the details of design, but rather focus on the augmentation, development and verification of the proposed concept. To support the very purposes, a full scale partially functional prototype has been developed and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of the design. Results from the user test (with the prototype) was subsequently used to adjust and refine the final concept, which earlier had been developed into virtual 3D model. This report describe the journey to realize the final design, from an initial motivation and exploration to idea generation, concept development and end with the construction and testing of the first prototype. The entire project was conducted mainly by one design student as the graduation thesis.

low back pain
mobilization

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a169edde-713f-458b-b1b3-6297f3d2c901

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Vu, T.T.