U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Liam Dwyer lost his left leg above the knee when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan in 2011. Then, he began numerous reconstructive surgeries and was fitted for a prosthetic. Now, Sgt. Dwyer will make his debut in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, driving the No. 27 Freedom Autosport Mazda MX-5. Watch his incredible story!

An excerpt from the New York Times, A Bionic Approach to Prosthetics Controlled by Thought

Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab have developed a next-generation prosthetic: a robotic arm that has 26 joints, can curl up to 45 pounds and is controlled with a person’s mind just like a regular arm.

Researchers think the arm could help people like Les Baugh, who lost both arms at the shoulder after an electrical accident as a teenager. Now 59, Mr. Baugh recently underwent surgery at Johns Hopkins to remap the remaining nerves from his missing arms, allowing brain signals to be sent to the prosthetic.

Read the rest of the article at The New York Times.

On May 1, 2015, The American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association invited Congressional members and their staff to attend a special news briefing to view the latest prosthetic technology, receive an overview of insurance challenges patients face, along with legislative, regulatory and research issues in Orthotics & Prosthetics, Medicare, VA, the Department of Defense and the private sector. Below are the speakers who brought the message that “Mobility Saves”!

Charles Dankmeyer, Jr., CPO, AOPA President

Audrey El-Gamil, Senior Manager, Dobson-DaVanzo & Associates

Adrianne Haslet-Davis, Boston Marathon Amputee

Peggy Chenowith, Amputee and Director of Social Media at the Amputee Coalition

Thomas F. Fise, Esq., Executive Director, AOPA

Aaron Holm, Ottobock, USA

Ian Fothergill, CPO, Medical Center O&P, Silver Spring, MD

America’s prosthetic and orthotic health professionals deliver patient – centered care each day to persons of all ages whose mobility has been compromised by limb loss and chronic limb impairment. This includes the commitment for trained, licensed and accredited health professionals delivering cost efficient care that also meets all patient protections established via federal and state statutes and rules, utilizing devices that satisfy all FDA requirements. We are intrigued by the emerging 3-D technologies outlined in several recent TV, print and Web-based media reports, while noting that in many cases the care featured involves instances that do not fully comply with FDA rules and/or federal or state licensure and accreditation requirements. We must also underscore that these reports frequently include serious inaccuracies in characterizing current costs of federally compliant advanced upper extremity prosthetics as between $40,000 and $80,000, when actual costs are often only about one-twentieth of those amounts ($1,500 to $5,000). All who share a true commitment to quality care would strongly encourage media involved in preparing and fact-checking such reports to be cognizant of these rampant inaccuracies, even as we all watch with great interest how new and promising patient treatment options may be evolving.

http://youtu.be/wLXRt-qRBfU