Wearing ‘electric underwear’ can banish bedsores
UNDERWEAR that gives you an electric shock could banish bed sores, researchers have claimed. They have developed the ‘Smart- e-Pants’ to stimulate muscles, relieving pressure and boosting blood supply to paralysed or bed-bound patients.
If routinely distributed in hospitals, they could help prevent the sores or pressure ulcers that blight almost half a million Britons each year, costing the NHS billions.
Although they are often dismissed as a minor problem, the worst bed sores can eat through to the bone and lead to fatal complications.
The pants, which look like normal underwear but contain pockets for electrode pads on the buttocks, trick muscles into contracting with small electric shocks.
This relieves pressure and boosts the supply of blood, oxygen and nutrients to the area, stopping the tissue and muscle from dying.
In a trial, 33 severely ill patients – including victims of car and motorcycle crashes and others with broken hips, multiple sclerosis or diabetes – wore the Smart-e-Pants for four days a week for up to two months.
The pants gave these volunteers tiny electric shocks for ten seconds every ten minutes for 12 hours a day.
Using traditional techniques – such as special mattresses and the regular turning of patients – between 10 and 30 per cent will develop pressure ulcers, but all of those testing the underwear remained sore-free. The Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference in New Orleans heard that the trial also proved the pants were safe, and had the approval of both patients and nurses.
If a large-scale trial is equally successful, the underwear could be on sale in three years, according to University of Calgary researcher Sean Dukelow.
‘If you come into the hospital and you get a pair of smart pants put on to prevent pressure ulcers, then the nurses and the doctors can go about their regular business in terms of saving your life,’ he said.
His colleague Robyn Warwaruk Rogers added: ‘Pressure ulcers can be terribly debilitating. Our hope is that this innovative system will eventually make a difference to the lives of millions of people.’ Dr Dukelow said the technology could also be adapted to protect other parts of the body prone to sores, including the shoulder blades and heels.
The pants are expected to cost several hundred pounds per pair. Treating a severe case of bed sores can cost tens of thousands.
Peter Carter, of the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘Pressure ulcers are not only very painful and distressing – they cost the NHS up to £2billion per year to treat.
‘If new technology can help and is cost effective then nurses will welcome that. However, this must not be a substitute for having the right number of well-trained staff on a ward.’