Upper and Lower Extremity Biomechanical Tolerance in Children

Children in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere around the world suffer from extremity injuries due to motor vehicle crashes, falls, and sports. Injuries to the lower and upper extremities of the child’s body are the second most frequent injuries sustained by children in vehicle crashes. These injuries are usually not life-threatening but mostly results in long term suffering and even disabilities in some cases. Several studies have been conducted on the biomechanics of the vulnerable parts of the child’s body susceptible to injuries in vehicle crashes including the head, chest, abdomen, pelvis, neck, and spine. Surprisingly, despite being the second most injured child body part in vehicle crashes and the possibility of long-term disability, studies on child vehicle crash extremity joint injury biomechanics are very scarce in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, very few studies on paediatric ankle joint biomechanical response have been conducted so far on this subject. This has led to an inadequate understanding of child vehicle crash extremity joint injury mechanisms. Hence, this project seeks to evaluate the biomechanical and anthropometric characteristics of paediatric upper and lower extremity joints by measuring the joint strength, stiffness, and range of motion (ROM) of all the principal joints in both the upper and lower extremities as well as the limb anthropometry of children. The results of this study would be useful in developing more biofidelic extremities of paediatric Anthropometric Test Devices (ATDs) which would enhance child safety in vehicles. Additionally, the data obtained would be beneficial to the medical field in diagnosing and treating extremity injuries sustained by children in vehicle crashes, sports, and falls as well as in as well as in the assessment and rehabilitation of children with disabilities like autism, cerebral palsy (CP), and down syndrome (DS).

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Contributors:

• Kassim Abdulrahman Abdullah ,Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UAE University
• Georgios Antoniou Stylianides, Associate Professor, Physical and Health Education, UAE University
• Kamiar Aminian, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)