Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

[Christopher Easthope]

Hello all,

I'm currently looking for a harness to provide both safety and weight support for patients on a treadmill in combination with a MoCap system. The criteria for the harness are:

- fall protection
- minimal impact on gait pattern also under weight support
- unimpeded marker visibility (especially around the hip)
- certification for use in a clinical setting
- a certain level of comfort


What I've seen so far are either extraordinarily clunky and bulky harnesses for clinical application that impact gait and trunk movement and frequently obscure marker positions, or modified climbing harnesses that provide fall protection but are majorly uncomfortable under weight support.

I'd be very interested to hear what brands / modifications / experiences other labs have and if anybody can recommend a harness?

Cheers in advance!

[Christopher Stanley]

Re: Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

We have the ZeroG system from Aretech and it works great. We have a track over our walkway that loops around over the treadmill so you can do either activity. The harness they use is more comfortable than a typical climbing harness, but the one issue is that it does cover the pelvis. Other than that, I think it will meet the rest of your needs.

Chris Stanley

[Brian Schulz]

Re: Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

I believe that the Zero-G system uses the Maine Anti-Gravity system vest (http://magsvest.com/), which is probably one of the better compromises between comfort, fall protecttion, and the ability to apply weight support. Robertson Mountaineering makes good body weight support harnesses, but they are bulky and restrict torso motion, but this helps with trunk control of SCI patients during gait training (http://www.robertsonharness.com/inde..._id=5&Itemid=1).
I've found that construction safety harnesses in general tend to be bulky and are not great for walking in. Climbing harnesses are better to walk in, but many don't control the upper body and they're not really designed to apply body weight support while walking. I had a local parachute rigger make a custom harness for me based on a tandem skydiving harness. This was by far the best option for my needs, but it didn't work for body weight support and would probably not be your best option.

I hope that helps some with the harnesses. The connection to the ceiling and lanyard system to hook the harness to it are other posts.

[Christopher Easthope]

Re: Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

Thanks everybody for the responses!
I had already scoped the more popular options such as the MAGs vest and the ZeroG and we'll probably end up making a custom rig as proposed by Brian as we felt the availible options have quite an impact on the gait. Additionally they cover up some of the landmarks we use for motion capture. To people out there using custom rigs - did you have to certify them in some form for use with patients?

[Daniel Heitzmann]

Re: Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

Dear Christopher,

I recently talked to a company from Switzerland. They build a device called "The Float", which looks quite promising. You'll find more information under http://thefloat.ch/

Kind regards

Daniel

[Drew Smith]

Re: Commercially available harnesses for body weight support during ambulation

Hello all,

I'm currently looking for a harness to provide both safety and weight support for patients on a treadmill in combination with a MoCap system. The criteria for the harness are:

- fall protection
- minimal impact on gait pattern also under weight support
- unimpeded marker visibility (especially around the hip)
- certification for use in a clinical setting
- a certain level of comfort


What I've seen so far are either extraordinarily clunky and bulky harnesses for clinical application that impact gait and trunk movement and frequently obscure marker positions, or modified climbing harnesses that provide fall protection but are majorly uncomfortable under weight support.

I'd be very interested to hear what brands / modifications / experiences other labs have and if anybody can recommend a harness?

Cheers in advance!

I just wanted to reply to this posting to bring it back to the top of this thread. We have an identical interest in passive harness systems and I am finding little searching on the Internet.

Both the suggested devices (above) seem appropriate to our needs but I wonder if there may be some other choices out there. I imagine there are many labs with harness systems, so perhaps a second request for suggestions might result in a few more possibilities.

Thanks so much!