A new treatment for broken wrists that incorporates traditional Chinese splint techniques was launched yesterday to speed up the recovery of elderly patients.
It uses a forearm brace to immobilise the fracture while allowing hand movements.
The splint is an alternative to conventional plaster, which does not allow this flexibility, said Guo Xia, an assistant professor at Polytechnic University's department of rehabilitation services, who invented the device with her colleague, Man Hau-chung, associate professor of the department of industrial and system engineering.
'Because it's less rigid it allows functional training of the wrist joint during immobilisation which will ultimately shorten the healing time,' Dr Guo said, adding that the device was ideal for the elderly because they normally took more time to recover.
While it usually took six to nine months to recover with the use of a plaster cast, the new treatment only took three months.
Dr Guo also said it was cheaper, at about $600, while plaster casting cost more than $2,000.