By LUIS ANDRES HENAO

From Associated Press

June 23, 2017 8:39 AM EST

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Being born without fingers can be tough for any child. Getting new ones — especially red and blue superhero themed digits — has made 8-year-old Kaori Misue a vibrant playground star.

Flexing her wrist muscles to bend the plastic fingers, she can work with tape and stickers at an arts and crafts class. She can ride a bike, skip a rope and bake pastries with her mom. Her amazed friends have even begged to borrow the 3D printed hand, which looks a little like a cheerily colored Transformers toy strapped to her wrist.

“It was magical,” her mom, Karina Misue, said. “The confidence it gives kids is tremendous. They’re using it with pride.”

Hundreds of Argentine kids like Kaori who were born without limbs are now able to write, play sports and make music thanks to low-cost prosthetic hands devised by Gino Tubaro, a 21-year-old inventor whose work was praised by President Barack Obama during a visit to Argentina last year.

Tubaro’s “Limbs” project is part of a trend of open-source 3D printing technology initiatives around the world. They include the nonprofit e-NABLE organization that groups volunteers to provide hands and arms to those born with missing limbs or who lost them to war, disease or natural disaster, and the Build It Workspace studio, which teaches people how to use high-tech printers.

Growing up, Tubaro remembers breaking apart home appliances to try to turn them into new inventions. Instead of reprimanding him, his parents signed him up to a weekend workshop where he had free range to experiment. Along the way, he began earning awards for his designs.

When he began using 3D printers, the mother of a child who was missing a limb asked him if he could design a hand for her son. Tubaro delivered it in 2014, when he was still in high school.

Today, more than 500 people, mostly children, have received similar prostheses and 4,500 more remain on a waiting list. Basic designs are custom modified to fit the needs of each user with the help of orthopedists.

The project uses volunteers around the world who own 3D printers to print the pieces and assemble and deliver the hands. They can cost as little as $15 compared to sophisticated designs that are priced up to $15,000. Some of the pieces can be interchanged to fit a specific purpose: from playing pingpong to grabbing a fork or riding a bike.

If children outgrow a model, it can be easily replaced, perhaps with a different theme. A black Batman design can hurl plastic disks. A red and gold Iron Man version can shoot rubber bands.

“It’s a wonderful experience because we’re getting photos of kids using the prostheses in Thailand, Mexico, Egypt … doing things that they couldn’t do before,” Tubaro said about the project, which is partly financed by donations and award money.

“Seeing a kid wearing a hand from Iron Man, Batman or Princess (Elsa from Frozen) gives us so much pride,” said Tubaro, who divides his time between the project and his second-year studies in electrical engineering at National Technological University in Buenos Aires.

Misue said she found out about Tubaro’s project when she saw Obama praise his work on TV. She filled out a form requesting a hand at his atomiclab.org site and sent a photo of her daughter’s hand on squared paper.

Kaori wanted a light blue-and-white Princess Elsa model, but since they ran out of those, she got a bright blue and red one that she likes to match with her outfits.

“Now it’s got these colors and it looks like Wonder Woman,” Kaori said after she used her 3D printed hand to pick up a cupcake baked by her mother. “It’s just missing yellow, but it doesn’t matter because I can wear something yellow.”

Three national coalitions including sixty (60) national rehabilitation and disability organizations will host a Congressional briefing on the value of rehabilitation and habilitation services and devices. As Congress considers health care reform, it is critical that people with injuries, illnesses, and disabilities have continued access to rehabilitative and habilitative care.

Compelling speakers will highlight the importance of intensive inpatient hospital rehabilitation, outpatient rehabilitation and habilitation therapies, prosthetic limbs and other assistive devices and technologies. Speakers include:

• U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) (invited): Bilateral leg amputee injured in Iraq
• U.S. Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL) Bilateral leg amputee injured in Afghanistan
• Eric LeGrand: Former Rutgers football player who sustained a spinal cord injury during a game
• Roseann Sdoia: Boston bombing survivor who sustained an above knee amputation
• Isabella Smith: Child with a developmental disability whose speech has benefitted from habilitative speech therapy

Powerful testimonials will be shared of personal injury, habilitation, rehabilitation, and recovery. Cutting-edge assistive devices and technologies will be demonstrated by users.

The briefing will take place on Tuesday, June 27, 2017 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., Eastern Time, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room SD-106. Over 50 Senate staff visits that same day are also planned to bring the message directly to policymakers.

A Marine veteran who lost all four limbs after stepping on an explosive device in Afghanistan in 2010 is celebrating after successfully undergoing surgery for a double arm transplant.

John Peck, 31, underwent a 14-hour transplant surgery in August. His body rejected the transplant for the first few weeks, but the immune response was managed with medication. He will undergo weeks to months of physical therapy to encourage the nerves to grow and keep the muscles from withering. Sensation in the transplanted arms may take months to develop, as the nerves grow.

“My dream job since I was 12 is to become a chef,” he told reporters, and hopes to have a shot at his dream career with his new arms.

Nine year old Zion, the youngest person in the country to undergo hand transplant surgery in July 2015 is doing well. He threw the first pitch at a recent Baltimore Orioles games, and has his sights on playing football.

Read the full story on the Washington Post.

Earlier this year, Medicare implemented a new policy on Comprehensive Care of Joint Replacement.  While positioned as a pilot test, all hospitals were forced to be involved.  Under this new program, hospitals are given financial incentives to reduce the total cost for hip and knee replacements.  If hospitals succeed in driving down the total costs, the hospitals keep a portion of the savings. If the hospitals fail to drive down the total costs, the hospitals will have to pay a portion of the tab.  If you are a Medicare patient, do you think this means you will receive the best quality of care or the cheapest?  If you said “cheapest”, keep reading to find out how Stark Rules could protect you from these “risk-sharing” deals.

The Stark Rules, also known as the Stark Laws, were created to help control conflicts of interest in medical care.  For example, they limit certain aspects of physician ownership of facilities to which physicians refer patients, including those facilities that provide blood tests and X-rays. In addition, they restrict other actions which could compromise the fundamental principle that patients can always look to their health care providers, first and foremost, to advocate for what is best for them as patients – not what makes them the most money.

As CMS/Medicare and other payers try to move aggressively toward “valued-based purchasing” and provider risk-sharing, CMS, private payers, and hospitals—all of whom stand to profit if others, namely providers, can be enticed to shoulder some of the risk and uncertainty that goes along with risk sharing—have found the Stark rules inconvenient and have beseeched their friends in Congress to do away with or, at least, substantially reduce the ‘teeth’ in the Stark Rules’ prohibitions on provider conflict of interest.  It is a game of big medicine vs. the little guys—patients and providers.  What we talk about as risk sharing today is very similar to what we used to call capitation, managed care, or HMOs.  If you think those things made things better for patients, then sure, do away with the Stark Rules and allow the system to create deals that operate to incentivize reductions in care to patients.

There is one aspect of how CMS has interpreted the Stark Rules that has proven particularly controversial, that being the in-office ancillary services (IOAS) exception, which among a number of other instances where it has permitted a measure of physician self-referral that the Stark Rules would NOT permit, this IOAS exemption granted by CMS has been used by some physicians to themselves deliver and bill to patients for prosthetics and/or orthotic devices supplies within the physician’s office or a related physically adjacent facility.  While AOPA and others oppose these broad interpretations of the in-office ancillary services exemption, it is important to recognize that eliminating the Stark Rules would open the door to even wider, essentially unlimited self-referral by hospitals, rehab facilities, as well as physician offices.  If you oppose the exemption CMS has granted in the in office ancillary services exemption, you very likely favor the underlying broad prohibition on self-referral (by physicians and other providers) that is embodied in the Stark Rules.  The bottom line, after all, is assuring the highest possible level and quality of patient care for prosthetic and orthotics patients.

However, if the Stark Rules are eliminated, Payers could set mechanisms to award all the business to the lowest bidder…again, patient beware.  Keep your eyes open, and let your voices be heard—with Congress, with your state legislators and others—it’s important!

The Department of Veterans Affairs has unilaterally decided to assign reimbursement amounts to prosthetic feet that are not consistent with the Center for Medicare Services. As a result of their action, veterans do not have the same access to certain prosthetic feet that those with Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance receive.

Read the letter from five Congressional members to the Secretary of the VA.

Take action now! Take a few minutes to send a prewritten letter to your representatives in Congress.

Veterans – use this letter.

Practitioners – use this letter.

Anyone else can click on one of the links above and customize the letter to your own circumstances.

Jeff Erenstone, CPO, President of Create Prosthetics and member of the eNABLE Advisory Boards, addressed the United Nations, during a panel headed by the UN ambassador of Iraq and sponsored by UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) about the value and potential of 3D printed prosthetics in Third World Environments and conflict zones.  He discussed the evolution of 3D printed prosthetics from “over hyped” plastic toys to devices that, when properly constructed in accordance with all FDA regulatory controls may be considered medical grade.  He shared his experience with recent efforts in Haiti and how his team focused on educating the local prosthetists on this technology and giving them the control over deciding if a 3D printed device is appropriate or to stick with a more conventional device.

Part of his address included one of the great benefits of 3D printed devices – that the components can be fabricated on-site.  This is especially valuable in conflict zones where shipping supplies is especially difficult. He plans continue to talk with UNMAS about their efforts to deploy relatively low cost 3D printed devices in Iraq and Syria.

Other panelists included the Ambassador of Iraq, who spoke about the great need for long term care of IED victims in north Iraq.  The UNMAS representative supported the information provided by the Ambassador and explained the actions that UNMAS are taking to deal with this area and other areas around the map.  Ned Norton of the Hercules Project also addressed the UN, as he has been working to supply people in conflict zones physical therapy free to people with disabilities.

Watch this touching video of a little girl who wears a prosthetic leg open her gift of an American Girl doll who is “like me”.