Prevalence of secondary prosthesis use in lower limb prosthesis users.

Purpose: Prostheses designed for daily use are often inappropriate for high-level activities and/or are susceptible to water damage and mechanical failure. Secondary prostheses, such as activity-specific or back-up prostheses, are typically required to facilitate uninterrupted participation in desired life pursuits. This study estimated the prevalence of secondary prosthesis use in a large, national sample of lower limb prosthesis users (LLPUs).

Porcine Lung-Derived Extracellular Matrix Hydrogel Properties Are Dependent on Pepsin Digestion Time.

Hydrogels derived from decellularized lungs are promising materials for tissue engineering in the development of clinical therapies and for modeling the lung extracellular matrix (ECM) . Characterizing and controlling the resulting physical, biochemical, mechanical, and biologic properties of decellularized ECM (dECM) after enzymatic solubilization and gelation are thus of key interest. As the role of enzymatic pepsin digestion in effecting these properties has been understudied, we investigated the digestion time-dependency on key parameters of the resulting ECM hydrogel.