頸髄損傷者のための頸部冷却ベルト免荷機構の開発

抄録

The authors have developed a neck cooling device for persons with spinal cord injury in order to prevent increase of body temperature during exercise on a wheelchair. The cooling device requires tubing components for water circulation, which cause load on the neck of a wearer. In this study we developed and evaluated a load-relief device in order to improve the usability of the neck cooling device. The proposed load-relief device consists of right-angle tube connectors and a shoulder sling belt. The rigid resin connectors can transfer the load of tubing on the neck to the shoulder through the sling, and offset the body displacement by elastic bending of tubes. The measurement of skin contact pressure around the neck demonstrated that the proposed device reduced the load caused by the cooling device.