수술자의 목 근육을 지지하는 와이어 구동 목 보조 기기의 개발

Abstract

There have been several surveys about the neck discomfort or pain that surgeons experience during or after long hours of surgery. While such discomfort or pain has been noted for the past few decades, there has been a lack of solutions for surgeons to overcome the ergonomic issue. In this study, we developed a wire-driven neck assistive device that could be utilized to reduce neck muscle fatigue. The device could be worn without discomfort for several hours as the device is ergonomically designed with a weight of 716 g. The performance of this device was validated through a set of performance tests, where the subject was standing with the fixed neck flexion angle of 45° for 15 minutes. It was proven throughout a set of experiments that the subject did not go through any noticeable muscle fatigue when wearing the device for 15 minutes, while some degree of muscle fatigue was detected when the subject was not wearing the device.