FR2765102A1 - Harness for supporting and moving handicapped persons - Google Patents

Abstract

The harness consists of a series of straps (I, II) which are fitted together to form a waistcoat (A) and shorts (B) connected to a diabolo carriage with mechanical or electrical drive. The two sections of the harness have connectors (l, m, n, o, v1, v2, v3, v4) for joining them together and to a support. One set of connectors (l, m, n, o) is in the form of straps, and the other (v1, v2, v3, v4) in the form of buckles, allowing the harness to be adapted to the size of the wearer. The waistcoat fastens round the body with other straps and buckles, while the central portion (O) of the shorts is made from a thermo-setting resin or other moulded material to protect the genitals and reduce the effects of traction forces needed to support a handicapped person.

Description

COMBINED MEANS POSITIONING AND MOVING DEVICE
FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES "ENGINE"
The present invention relates to a device with combined means allowing the lift, the vertical and standing position and the movement of people with motor disabilities.

 I1 is various devices currently used but whose commissioning is long, requires a large staff, and moreover turns out to be completely uncomfortable, heavy, and impractical for the assisted person.

It is known that there are a certain number of technical aids for the displacement or verticalization of disabled people. Certain aids are fixed, such as grab bars, parallel bars, gallows in bed, gantries, etc.

Other aids are mechanized, such as patient lifts, standings, walkers, electric standing and rehabilitation tables, trolleys, wheelchairs, etc.

By their nature, fixed systems are too limited in use to be compared to the device according to the invention.

They are designed for very specific, punctual use, limited in time, and infinite not applicable to severely disabled.

The mechanized systems currently known and used have constraints of time and practicability and heaviness in implementation which are hardly compatible with the primary aim sought, namely the rapid and easy positioning of the comfort of the disabled.

The hoists generally consist of a frame adjustable in width for the passage of the doors, equipped with several wheels, generally four, two of which can be locked. Limited load capacity of around 130 Kilograms.

The lifting is conventionally carried out by the use of a hydraulic pump. The maximum elevation is approximately 1.20 meters.

If they can be used to move a disabled person over short distances, or from their bed to the chair, for example, it is neither a verticalization device nor a functional rehabilitation device, the disabled person being seated or in position semi-elongated according to currently known models.

Standings are verticalization devices that include supports immobilizing the lower limbs. They are generally equipped with a tablet allowing the disabled person to have manual activities. It is known that certain models offer the possibility of sitting.

These are devices allowing the standing station and the maintenance in this position. The user is, however, unable to move; moreover the physical efforts of setting up are not suppressed: they are not functional rehabilitation devices.

The walkers currently used exist in different versions allowing movement inside or outside. They consist of a frame, usually mechanical, mounted on several wheels, depending on the model. The disabled person is required to lean on a kind of handlebars to which handles are attached, and then pushes the walker in front of them. The various models currently existing and used can be equipped with various means allowing the user to rest, or baskets allowing the transport of effects.

These walkers can only be used by people with sufficient possibility of using their upper limbs and whose lower limbs are only very partially affected by disability. It is, in fact, a device for use at home, or in a medical environment.

The verticalization tables or verticalization carts are mainly used for obtaining a progressive verticalization or for the maintenance of an acquired verticalization.

The person is, conventionally, seated on an armchair or lying on a table. Then this chair or this table are gradually brought into the position required by the treatment, by means of mechanical or electrical devices.

The positioning limit is reached as soon as the disabled person is placed vertically, that is to say when standing.

Travel is very little used because it is not practical, the physical effort to be provided by the assistants of the disabled person being significant.

Finally, the patient must have the use of his upper limbs. The sitting position is more conventionally implemented by the use of a verticalization trolley: this trolley allows movement in the seated position.

As a rule, these devices are expensive and of extremely limited use at home.

The means indicated above for lifting or moving people with a motor disability have a number of drawbacks related to the impossibility of using such means in cramped places, the need for significant physical effort and the compulsory presence of several assistants, a very long set-up and work time, and finally the practical impossibility of prolonged standing.

These means are all inert, even if sometimes effective. The devices currently known and used practically all respond to mechanical stresses whose origin is the work of the disabled person himself, sometimes assisted by a manipulator.

All the existing automatic devices, mainly used in articular pathologies, have the major drawback of the absence of precise effort metering.

Only the suffering or the musculo-articular fatigue are an obvious indicator, but too imprecise and especially too late: indeed a threshold of suffering cannot be determined before the onset of pain.

The rehabilitation of disabled people, as currently practiced, often leads to secondary pathology generated by post-traumatic injuries, consequence of an overly heavy rehabilitation protocol.

The mobilization or rehabilitation protocols currently used do not integrate the possibility of total freedom of therapeutic movements.

The aim sought by the applicant was to minimize, or even eliminate all the disadvantages described above, the device according to the invention will provide for this.

It is therefore the essential aim sought by the applicant and which guided the research leading to the production of the device according to the invention practically achieved by the use of a harness of a particular type associated with various means.

The device according to the invention essentially consists of a restraint harness provided with hooking devices making it possible to lift, put in a vertical or standing position, maintain in position, move and mobilize, people with permanent or temporary motor disabilities caused by a malformation, illness, injury or aging.

The harness which is the subject of the invention is in the form of a vest made of flexible material, without sleeves, and of an attached panty forming a single piece, but which can, if necessary, be transformed into two independent pieces.

The drawings appended to the description give the details.

This vest (A) is reinforced by horizontal (I) and vertical (II) bands produced by means of "strap" type canvas bands, adapted to the horizontal and vertical forces undergone by its installation and use.

These bands are attached to the outside and inside of the vest (A) by means of through seams.

These bands (I) and (II) can also be made of polyester or any other material suitable for being usable as a strap.

The resistance of the vest to vertical forces, caused by the effect of gravity, is made possible by the presence of two vertical reinforcing bands (IV) located laterally at the middle of each shoulder. These bands take their attachment at the bottom of the vest (A) on the front face thereof, to end at the bottom of the rear face of this vest (A).

These bands are sewn on the inside and outside of this vest.

As a secondary reinforcement of this vest, three horizontal bands are fixed inside and outside of it, starting at the location of the armpits and ending at the level of the navel.

On the front of this vest there is installed a closure means composed of three strips of fabric or other suitable material. These straps (III) are sewn on the horizontal reinforcement strips (I) at the left cuff and are used according to the same principle as the fastening of a conventional belt.

The buckles (1) of this belt are sewn on the right side of the vest and the straps which adapt to it are provided with holes located at defined intervals allowing an adjustment and a perfect positioning of the vest according to the morphology of the disabled user.

A means is provided to increase the comfort of the user while allowing the vest part of this harness to be used by disabled people of different morphology.

This means consists of a ventilated foam pad fixed by a double adhesive strip on the armpits of this vest.

Inside and outside the vest will be adapted a reinforcement strip (VI).

This strip (VI) will be sewn just above the waist of the vest, that is to say at waist level, conventionally included and going around this vest.

On the front face (X) of the vest and on the first vertical strip (IV) and on the first horizontal strip (I) will be fixed by sewing, four attachment means (d, e, f, g) allowing the suspension, by means of carabiners of this vest with the gallows useful for the lift of the person. This bracket is itself conventionally attached to an ordinary diabolo for longitudinal or vertical displacement.

These means (d, e, f, g) can be of various shapes, materials and dimensions.

On the rear face (Y) of the vest will also be fixed by sewing on the first horizontal strip (I) four attachment means (h, i, j, k) allowing the suspension, with the same function, material, shape and type as (d, e, f, g).

On the front (X) and rear (Y) side of the waistcoat, but on the third horizontal strip, will be sewn, plumb and on the belt type point loops (vl, v2, v3, v4) allowing the hooking and securing of the pants (B) and the vest (A). It is shown in the accompanying drawing, in the open position and secured to the vest (A).

It consists of a central part (0) determined by the junction point of the crossing of the seams of the bands (l, m, n, o) the ends of which will be attached by straps to the belt-type loops (vl, v2 , v3, v4) of the vest part (A) of the harness.

The central part (0) of these pants is covered with a canvas or other non-irritating material in the form of a double baby diaper. This fabric (Z) is sewn on the bands constituting the central part (0) of the pants. This part (0) may be equipped, as the case may be, and more particularly for men, with a shell of molded material, intended to protect the genitals of the person dressed in the harness according to the invention, but in all cases will be present a means in thermosetting resin, or in any other tight material, intended to alleviate the effects of the traction forces necessary for the lift of the disabled person with the drawbacks related to its weight, and which will have been suspended , by way of nonlimiting example, by means of the device described above.

Once the harness is in place and adapted to the body of the disabled person, it will be suspended by means of this harness from a rail movement device describing a circuit adapted to each particular use and variable by various switches.

This rail, or these rails, will be fixed by means of anchoring to the ceiling of a room, or on any other support capable of receiving the rail or rails concerned.

A mechanical device, adapted on rail, will allow the disabled person to move. This mechanical device consists of a means carrying rollers forming a carriage. This carriage can be braked, moved forward or backward, or stopped by means of conventionally known devices, electrical or mechanical, such as for example an electric hoist type motor. This cart can, depending on the case, move the person or be moved by the same person in case the latter is walking.

In this sliding carriage on rail is incorporated a means allowing the adjustment of the length of the main strap.

This will be adjustable by the use of an electric motor used for winding and adapted to the mobile carriage.

The main strap is attached by a conventional carabiner to a metal bracket, of known shape, and terminated by two Y-shaped branches provided with hooking rings. The bracket and the harness covering the disabled person will be connected by four straps provided at their ends with carabiners, and coming to be fixed on the one hand to the hooking rings of the bracket and on the other hand to the hooking rings of the harness according to the invention.

This harness having been previously adjusted and fixed on the disabled person as indicated above.

The device according to the invention therefore allows the lifting by straps and rail, and therefore to lift the disabled person from his bed, his wheelchair, or any other place, and to keep him in a standing position while being able to adjust the height and the tension exerted on the straps according to its size, its weight, its degree of handicap and the position adopted.

The device according to the invention allows the total mobility of the patient, generating an ideal absence of stress resulting from the weight which would have been conventionally applied to such and such a joint of the body if we had used current means.

The laxity of the movement which is thus induced by the device according to the invention, participates in the practical implementation of the invention.

The lifting means described above prevent the disabled person from being in an unstable suspension and consequently cancel any pendulum movement.

The implementation of the invention allows the disabled person to find the sensations related to standing and walking, without the immediate constraint of gravity.

The device according to the invention can be usefully supplemented, depending on the handicap of the person concerned, by various additional means such as shoes, roller or ice skates, etc.

The device according to the invention can also be used after fitting on the body of the disabled person a combination on which the targeted harness will be adapted.

This combination can be provided, depending on the case with electrical or magnetic means inducing a muscular stimulus.

The tests carried out over a long period, on the basis of prototypes entirely in accordance with the device and means according to the invention have made it possible to note the importance of this invention and the possibility of its industrial exploitation by the hospital services, of functional rehabilitation. , specialized accommodation, or by balneotherapy institutes, all the more so since people assisting the disabled person have the possibility of using their upper limbs. Indeed, in the conventionally known devices, assistants are forced to hold with their arms the disabled person who is to be mobilized in a standing position. The invention may also be used in an individual dwelling, at a workplace, in a business, in
Help Centers through Work or Protected Workshops.

The industrial manufacture of this device consisting of a harness, according to the description, will allow for all uses as described above to obtain the same results as those recorded in the tests.

The practical descriptive characteristics of the invention are supplemented by the accompanying drawings.

Claims (4)

 1) Device with combined means allowing the lift, the upright and upright position and the horizontal or vertical movement of people with motor disabilities by connecting, by means of suitable straps, this device to an assembly consisting of a strap bracket, it - even connected by carabiner to a diabolo carriage allowing by mechanical or electrical energy the horizontal movement front or rear, left or right and vertical up or down. This device is characterized in that it consists of a two-part harness, a vest (A) and pants (B), provided with securing means (l, m, n, o, vl, v2, v3 , v4) from the pants to the vest, and means for hooking the vest to the gallows, these means (d, e, h, i) being sewn onto the vest.  2) Device according to claim 1 characterized in that the vest (A) and the pants (B) are interconnected by means of straps (l, m, n, o) and belt buckles (vl, v2, v3 , v4) sewn on the vest (A), making it possible to secure the vest (A) and the pants (B) by adapting them to the morphology of the user.  3) Device according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the vest (A) closes by means of straps (III) and belt loops (1) allowing a perfect adaptation of the vest to the morphology of the user .  4) Device according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the central part (O) of the pants comprises means made of thermosetting resin, or any other molded material, intended to alleviate the effects of the necessary traction forces. to the lift of the disabled person.