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Don't Try This At Home: DIY Prosthesis

by Salley Glaetzer | Submitted Friday Feb 13, 2009 [06:33 AM]


TASMANIAN amputee and business owner Mark Lesek is accustomed to pushing the limits of what is possible.

Refusing to give in to medical advice he was not suitable for a prosthetic arm, Mr Lesek not only proved the doctors wrong but created his own prostheses.

Now the mechanical engineering tradesman is working on a computerised arm that could be controlled by the brain.

"Normally what's inside the human body is a doctor's department but I've questioned them and challenged them," said Mr Lesek, 52, of Seven Mile Beach.

When he lost his arm in a car accident five years ago he was told the amputation was too high for a prosthesis to be fitted.

Refusing to be put off, he went to Melbourne to be fitted with an $80,000 German model. But after a year, that proved unsuitable.

"It kept breaking down and no one in Australia was allowed to fix it," Mr Lesek said.

"It cost a minimum of $6000 to send it away to Germany."

He saw a TV program about osseointegration, which involves implanting metal into bone, but he said the doctors in Melbourne told him the procedure could not be done in Australia. Once again he would not give in.

Mr Lesek flew to Sweden to be assessed by the pioneering Branemark Osseointegration Centre.

A year later and after two operations, the procedure had been successful, he said.

"I have the most expensive bolt in Australia in my arm ... it's an $80,000 bolt that gives me back my shoulder function," he said.

Failing to find an affordable prosthesis that suited his line of work, Mr Lesek simply decided to make one -- or several.

The "bolt" allows Mr Lesek to point and direct his self-built prosthetic arm.

A University of Tasmania team is helping with a carbon-fibre computer-controlled arm.

And Mr Lesek is investigating technology that will allow it to be controlled by brainwaves.

"You wear a cap with electrodes which will be interfaced into the computer," he said.

Mr Lesek and a colleague also made a lightweight magnesium "body powered" prosthesis at his welding and engineering business in Moonah.

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Tags:prosthetics  robot+arm  amputee  Mark+Lesak  rehabiliative+engineering 

(http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/02/13/55201_tasmania-news.html)

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