Vietnam veteran Dennis Goodwin gives his prosthetic foot a workout every day, which makes the Roswell excavator an ideal candidate for a new robotic lower-leg system that contains its own power source and lots of electronic gadgetry.
Goodwin on Wednesday became the first New Mexican fitted for the bionic foot, called the “PowerFoot BiOM.” Minutes later, he walked through a labyrinth of halls and stairways at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, then climbed a hill behind the hospital.
Douglas Bourgoyne adjusts a robotic foot for Dennis Goodwin, who on Wednesday became the first New Mexican fitted for the prosthesis, called the PowerFoot BiOM. Goodwin later climbed a steep hill behind the hospital. (adolphe pierre-louis/journal)
“This is amazing,” Goodwin, 59, said of his new prosthetic. “This is going to be a life-changing deal here.”
The heart of the $40,000 device is a battery-powered motor that does the work of the calf muscle.
It also contains a variety of sensors and a microprocessor that tells the motor when to fire and how much force is required, said Brian Frasure, a clinical specialist for iWalk Inc., the Bedford, Mass., firm that manufactures PowerFoot BiOM. Frasure lost a foot as a teenager and uses PowerFoot.
“It has its own brain,” Frasure said of the device. “It’s the next best thing to an amputee being able to control it with his own mind.”
The PowerFoot also differs from most lower-leg prosthetics by offering a 24-degree range of motion. Conventional prosthetics offer none. Goodwin said the added flexibility helped him walk better, even before technicians turned on the battery.
Goodwin lost his left foot in 1993 after a boating accident. But that hasn’t prevented him from operating heavy equipment and backhoes. He has long relied on a carbon-fiber prosthesis of an older design that lacks a power source.
“I’m pretty rough on them,” Goodwin said of his prosthetics. He has broken two on the job. “I’m in and out of ditches, up and down from equipment.”
Goodwin’s active lifestyle made him a good pick as New Mexico’s first PowerFoot user, said Douglas Bourgoyne, clinical supervisor of the New Mexico VA Medical System’s prosthetics department. PowerFoot was developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.
Bourgoyne plans to select a few candidates to test the new prosthetic. The VA system is paying the cost of the PowerFoot, which currently is not available through other New Mexico vendors.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
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