Testing the Long-Term Effectiveness of Glide Control for Upper Limb Prostheses Compared to Pattern Recognition

What this Trial Is About

Researchers are evaluating the Glide prosthesis control system to see if it reduces the burden of use for patients with upper limb amputations and their clinical care teams compared to the Pattern Recognition-based advanced myoelectric control. The goal is to fill gaps in knowledge that will help guide prosthesis prescriptions and rehabilitation. This trial focuses on people with unilateral trans-radial or trans-humeral limb loss who are candidates for advanced myoelectric prostheses with two or more degrees of freedom. Participants will use both a Glide-controlled upper limb prosthesis and a Pattern Recognition-based upper limb prosthesis in a randomized order. One group starts with the Glide system and then switches to Pattern Recognition, while the other group begins with Pattern Recognition and then switches to Glide. These control systems use different methods to translate muscle signals into prosthetic movements, with Glide using a 2-D cursor map and Pattern Recognition using machine learning to classify muscle activation patterns. During the study, participants will be monitored weekly for 168 days from the delivery of the prosthesis. Researchers will track the daily number of control adjustments, clinical follow-up interventions, socket comfort, pain levels, satisfaction, functional ability, and daily prosthesis wear time. This comprehensive monitoring aims to assess the long-term stability and usability of each control strategy to inform future prosthetic care.

Long-Term Stability of the Glide Control Strategy