Effect of wearing a shape memory alloy corset on sacral sitting pressure and anterior pelvic tilt in older persons seated in a wheelchair

Abstract

Pressure ulcers in the sacrum due to pelvic tilting become a problem when elderly people sit on a wheelchair. Though there are a lot of elderly people who spend time sitting on a wheel chair on a daily basis, there are few reports of pressure ulcer prevention in the sacrum that can be applied to ordinary wheelchairs. Therefore, we examined the effect of reducing the sitting pressure of the sacrum when wearing a shape memory alloy corset with a mechanism that can be expected to have a pelvic forward tilting effect while on an ordinary wheelchair. The subjects were 16 elderly inpatients (age: 83±8 years old). As a result of comparison between the conditions with and without corset, the sacrum sitting pressure was shown to be significantly lower with this corset. Therefore, this corset is considered one of the preventions of pressure ulcers in the sacrum which can be applied to ordinary wheelchairs.