3D Printers for Autonomy in the Care of Inpatients in Continuing and Rehabilitation Care

Summary

Patients hospitalized in Continuing and Rehabilitation Care Units (CRCU) are for the most part elderly people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, requiring individual, personalized rehabilitation care.

Some of these patients require ergotherapy to help them regain functional ability in everyday activities. The ergotherapist organizes therapeutic activities tailored to patients' needs, with a view to optimizing their level of autonomy.

Loss of autonomy is closely linked to nutritional status, which often tends towards malnutrition in patients admitted to CRCU, with deleterious consequences for the elderly. The use of technical aids to facilitate meal-taking could be a way of alleviating undernutrition. A technical aid is defined as a material aid that enables elderly or disabled people to compensate for a limitation in activity.

The investigators are interested in the use of adapted cutlery, as patients often find it difficult to eat on their own, being unable to grip their cutlery correctly. Commercially adapted cutlery exists, but it is expensive and difficult to use because it is not adapted to each patient (standard size) and is too heavy. What's more, the investigators observe that their use does not necessarily improve the patient's degree of dependence, generally measured by the Katz scale.

The idea of the team of ergotherapist is to offer ergonomic cutlery handles with diameters adapted to patients' degree of prehension. They offer handles with diameters of 25 mm, 30 mm, 35 mm and 40 mm. The diameter is customized according to the hand's flexion capacity, as assessed by a joint and functional assessment. What's original about these technical aids is that they are designed from thermoformable materials with the help of a 3 Dimension printer and Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing software, in partnership with the Fablab (Fabrication laboratory) in Toulon and the Hyères media library. They have the added advantage of being lightweight and inexpensive.

Conditions

• Neuro-Degenerative Disease

Interventions

DEVICE

adapted cutlery handle printed with 3D printer

The patient's autonomy will be assessed by the same ergotherapist, and the quantity of food ingested will be measured by a dietician at 3 similar lunch times: * before using the adapted cutlery handles (Day0); * when the adapted cutlery handles are used for the first time (Day1); * after 3 days' use of the adapted cutlery handles (Day3) On Day0 and Day3, the ergotherapist will carry out an ecological assessment of the meals. Ecological assessment is used in occupational therapy to observe and analyze the patient's interactions with his environment and their repercussions on his ability to perform a task. The aim here is to assess whether the patient exhibits compensation of the upper limb (such as shoulder elevation or trunk inclination) during the meal performed without technical aids (Day0) and that performed after the learning phase of using the adapted handle (Day3). The patient's participation will end at the end of the Day3 assessments.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Groupement Interrégional de Recherche Clinique et d'Innovation

  collaborator OTHER

• Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Toulon La Seyne sur Mer

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Nicolas Brocandel · Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Toulon La Seyne sur Mer

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-03-30

Primary Completion

2027-10-31

Completion

2027-10-31

Countries

• France

Study Locations