Elbow Prosthesis for Partial or Total Upper Limb Replacement

While the prosthetic systems for hands amputation are fairly common, the active prostheses for the other joints of the upper limb are rarer. In addition to commercial reasons undoubtedly related to the low number of trans-humeral amputations than the hands amputations and to the exiguous number of shoulder disarticulation, technical reasons are also crucial. Among which, the electro-mechanical complexity of the system and, above all, the difficulty to design simple and “natural” motion control systems. Nevertheless active elbow and shoulder prosthetic joints can be very important for some upper limb amputees for the everyday life, for working or for other social reasons, in particular if the amputation is bilateral.