Thermal Stabiliser of Knee Joint

Cryotherapy, also known as cold therapy, is a method consisting in the lowering of the temperature of tissues using water, ice, air, ethyl chloride, dinitrogen monoxide or liquid nitrogen. Treatment with low temperature may be applied generally or locally. General cryotherapy consists in the cooling of the whole body, whereas local one refers to the decrease in the temperature of skin and tissues. In this method, the cooling area should not be too big. The research project involved the second type of the above-mentioned cooling methods. The project entitled “Thermal Stabiliser of the Knee Joint” was implemented by a team of students. The objective of this project was to develop and then fabricate a cooling system using the Peltier module, including the attachment of the system to the stabiliser of the knee joint. The developed device will find application in local cryotherapy of the knee joint. This type of therapy is commonly applied in early post-trauma conditions with the damage to soft tissues (spraining and dislocation of joints, contusions of muscles), chronic inflammatory and degenerative diseases as well as overload disorders (degenerative diseases of knee joints, rheumatoid arthritis of joints), conditions of increased muscle tension and limitation of joint mobility, chronic oedema and joint exudates. The first stage of the research encompassed a review of the existing solutions of ortheses and methods of cooling the knee joint. Next, two concepts of the device were developed and their visualization was prepared in the Inventor software programme. The third phase involved the development of the documentation concerning the project implementation and the applied technology. This was done using the CAD software programme. The project was also analysed with a view to satisfying the functional requirements. In addition to that, necessary elements were printed using a 3D printer. The last stage involved the manufacturing of a prototype of a functional device taking into consideration electronics and an Android system application.