How do normals move during prolonged wheelchair-sitting?
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. The clinical practice for minimizing the risk of pressure sores (PS) is to relief pressures under bony prominences of immobilized patients by changing their postures frequently. The US Department of Health advises to relief sitting pressures at least every 1 hour, and every 15 minutes for individuals who are body-abled. Surprisingly, there is paucity of information in the literature concerning motion of healthy subjects during prolonged sitting, which can be compared with these recommendations. Considering that healthy individuals are able to sit for hours without suffering injuries, such information seems particularly important. Accordingly, our objective was to measure frequency of postural changes and extent of motion during postural changes among healthy subjects who sit in a wheelchair (N=10), in order to provide information that is missing in the literature of PS biomechanics. Sub
