Amputation, Prosthesis Use, and Phantom Limb Pain: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

One of the view available books that cover amputation, prosthesis use, and phantom limb pain together, as the intricately related topics that they are. Offers a broad appeal to a varied readership through innovative exploration of the entire process surrounding limb loss and eventual recovery. The book will contain contributions from the fields of anthropology, biomedical engineering, computer science, neuroscience, nursing, prosthetics and orthotics, psychology, and rehabilitative medicine. It will be comprised of three broad interrelated sections. Following an introductory chapter in which the topics and chapters of the book are overviewed, the first section ("Providing and Monitoring the Use of Prostheses") will concentrate on the work of prostheticians and will consist of three chapters. The first of these, written by a clinician responsible for the provision of prosthetics in a large regional area of the UK, will present a range of ethical and medico-legal issues for rehabilitation professionals in the supply and withdrawal of prostheses and assistive technology for people with limb loss or deformity. The second chapter, provided by a prosthetician and prosthetic engineers, will present the development of an innovative computerized technique for monitoring upper limb prosthesis activity. The final chapter in this section is written by an anthropologist, himself an amputee, presenting ethnographic work on how prostheticians and their clients actually "go about" providing artificial limbs. Together these chapters explicate the processes involved in prostheticians' work with clients in a manner which will be of interest to students and professionals from a range of disciplines. Section 2 ("The Experience and Meaning of Prosthesis Use") focuses on the experiences and meanings of prosthesis users themselves. The first of three chapters, written by members of the Dublin Psychoprothetics Group, explores the ways in which people adap