Multi-terrain walking area at new prosthetics site

Amputees at one of East Anglia's biggest hospitals can test artificial limbs on "realistic surfaces" as a result of a clinic moving to a new home.

Addenbrooke's has moved its prosthetic and orthotic service from its Cambridge base to a "high-tech new home" in nearby Great Shelford.

The facility includes an outdoor multi-terrain walking area that allows people to test new limbs on smooth surfaces, cobbles, grass and the "knobbly textures found underfoot at pedestrian crossings".

The site will assist more than 3,300 patients a year.

Addenbrooke's said the centre at Chaston House, Mill Court, had been re-designed to provide facilities for patients who had lost limbs, or needed orthotic services, as a result of medical conditions or trauma.

It will be operated by mobility specialist Opcare Ltd, on behalf of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and run by more than 30 staff including consultants, allied health professionals and clinical scientists.

Some of the funding has come from Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust (ACT), which paid for the multi-thousand-pound walking site and decoration for the children's area.

For the first time prosthetics are also being made in an on-site workshop. There are high-tech gait testing facilities, scanners and "force plates" to detect how patients move, and ways to help them.

National operations manager Alex Chapman, who oversaw the project, said: "We are absolutely thrilled to be able to officially open this dedicated new facility, which offers support to new patients at their greatest time of need, and to existing patients who we see on an ongoing basis."

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