title: Mechanical evaluation of hip pads to protect against fracture of elderly femurs in falls.
abstract: Hip fracture in the aged easily occurs by falls and may cause these persons to become bedridden. Hip pads are effective in protecting hip fracture as they directly deflect and absorb the impact forces by falls. It is necessary for the material and the structure of hip pads to be designed to realize both high impact absorption and compliance (comfort during wearing). In this report, an impact testing system was developed to test the impact absorbing performance of hip pad with air cushions designed by the research group. The impact absorbing performance was evaluated by the impact load, collision time, and maximum load. To confirm the effectiveness in protecting against hip fracture, an impact force was applied to the greater trochanter of the human femur and the degree of fracture was measured by X-ray examination. As a result, the hip pad with air cushions had a high impact absorbing performance and was sufficiently effective to protect against hip fracture.
authors.affiliation: Division of Human Mechanical Systems and Design, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. tadano@eng.hokudai.ac.jp
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tadano
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nakatsuchi
authors.forename: Naoko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Goto
authors.forename: Kazuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fujisaki
authors.forename: Yukio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nakatsuchi
mesh_terms: D000058:Accidental Falls; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005260:Female; D005269:Femur; D006615:Hip; D006620:Hip Fractures / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008422:Materials Testing / Q000379:methods*; D010349:Patient Compliance; D011481:Protective Clothing; D013314:Stress, Mechanical