BREG: When a Brace is Not a Brace
BY JOHN MCCORMICK, JULY 14, 2005
While touring the floors of the AOSSM sports medicine conference in Colorado this morning, Brad Mason the President of BREG (an Orthofix company) pulled us aside to show us the company's new FUSION functional knee brace. Before we could say a brace is a brace, Brad immediately impressed us with the FUSIONs thesis: redefine the relationship with the leg.
The standard of care in bracing is to protect the knee with a rigid surrounding structure. In this case, the FUSION conforms to movements in the leg and, vis a vis a series of flexible polymer (Zytel) hinges that surround the medial side of the brace, allows for a close fit to the shape of the leg and force distribution that prevents displacement.
Very cool, we thought, but what about strength in a football tackle? In fact, some very convincing biomechanical testing has shown that the FUSION offers significant protection in a lateral impact where loads are absorbed and dispersed. The ingenious trick is that the brace has the flexible polymer on the medial side of the knee only and the lateral side is rigid. The result is that during a lateral impact, forces are dispersed which causes the medial side of the brace to tension and thus minimize displacement.
A neat trick!
