HMN 2025: How Alternating-pressure mattress design may cut back threat of mattress sores

A group of engineers on the University of California, Los Angeles, working with a colleague from Okay Medical LLC, has developed a pressurized mattress that reduces the chance of creating mattress sores for bedbound sufferers. In their paper published within the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how they developed their new mattress and the way it may be used to assist sufferers.

Patients who’re confined to a mattress for a protracted time frame are likely to develop strain ulcers, identified extra generally as mattress sores. For some sufferers, they’re a brief annoyance; for others, notably those that stay bedbound for lengthy durations of time or who’re unconscious, they’ll result in lethal infections.

Over the years, researchers have tried to develop a mattress that might forestall mattress sore improvement, however up to now, they’ve proved to be disappointing. In this new study, the group in California developed a mattress that they declare can clear up the issue.

The purpose mattress sores develop is that as elements of the physique apply strain to the mattress attributable to physique weight, blood move is reduce off, resulting in demise of the tissue. The apparent resolution is to maneuver a affected person into totally different positions periodically, however prior analysis has proven that these efforts are pricey and subsequently should not carried out typically sufficient to be efficient. So the researchers designed a mattress that modifications the strain factors between the mattress and physique factors robotically frequently.

The group began by constructing a mattress with over 1,200 small rams that may very well be lifted or lowered independently throughout the floor of the mattress after which utilizing a life-like dummy to check approaches to decreasing strain periodically. That led to the creation of a mattress coated with shifting panels. The panels have been made in sections, every of which holds a mechanism that strikes backwards and forwards along with the opposite panels.

The result’s a mattress that strikes backwards and forwards on demand. As it does so, the highest elements of the panels change form barely to alter the strain exerted by the physique above. Springs make shifting the mattress backwards and forwards simpler, and motors enable it to work robotically. The shifting panels are coated with a foam high for consolation.

Testing of the mattress with a particular dummy confirmed it diminished strain factors sufficient to doubtlessly forestall the event of mattress sores. Human testing is required earlier than the group will know if their mattress works as they’ve hoped.

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