The carbon-fiber foot plate absorbs and releases energy with each stride. Gregory Reid
After surgery, military personnel whose legs have been crushed or blasted can end up with a limb that looks healthy but is debilitated by pain and weakness. Some patients even ask for amputations. The Army solution is a sort of scaffold for intact but malfunctioning legs called the Intrepid Dynamic Exoskeletal Orthosis, and now, thanks to a company called *Hanger, it's going to be available to civilians too.
Basically, the IDEO is a carbon-fiber exoskeleton that attaches below the knee and connects to a foot plate that fits into a shoe. Taking a step and pushing off the plate loads the IDEO with energy just like a prosthetic running blade. Then it releases, providing auxiliary power to the leg. More than 500 people have gotten IDEOs since late 2009; about 60 of them even returned to combat. "Some of those blast injuries were pretty horrific," says Ryan Blanck, who invented the IDEO as a prosthetist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. But the loss of functionality from those wounds isn't that different from problems caused by nerve disorders or car crashes.
Blanck will be heading up Hanger's program in the Seattle area, and several dozen people are already waiting to be fitted. When that happens, their legs won't stand in the way of them getting back on their feet.
*Correction appended 10.30.13/12:37 PM. An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the company as Hangar instead of Hanger.
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