Prosthetics – An Indipensable Assent In The Contemporary World

Mr. Abhishek Joshi
Final year B Pharm 2020-21

To be honest, when people hear the word “prosthetics”  , how many of them actually have an idea of what the word means?

The word Prosthetics is used to describe an artificial device that replaces a missing body part in an individual’s body.

Usually, when an individual loses a body part attributed to accident, injury, disease, or congenital anomaly, for that individual the feeling of not having a body part for example a hand or a limb, can have disastrous ramifications on the mental well-being of that individual.

The notion of being forced to spend the rest of his life as a dependent becomes unacceptable and humiliating. Forget actually seeing the above-mentioned individual without a hand or a limb,  but the prospect of visualizing the patient becomes terrifying for family members. Not only the patient but also the family members go through excruciating agony.

We are fortunate that we are living in the 21st Century. It is an era of miracles, miracles which people living in the 17th or 18th Century couldn’t even have imagined.

Prosthetics are modern-day saviors for such people. For people who have lost an arm or a limb, prosthetics can ameliorate mobility and can impart a sense of being semi-independent if not fully independent to such people.  Prosthetics also impart a sense of being resilient in such people. For those people, using a prosthetic isn’t a sign of weakness but a symbol of grit and determination, a symbol of resolve to exceed despite facing herculean odds.

Our society has a plethora of examples of disabled people achieving great success with the use of prosthetics. For instance, paralympic gold medallist Sumit Antil, renowned Bharatanatyam dancer Sudha Chandran, Mount Everest Climber Arunima Sinha, etc. Prosthetics enabled these people to achieve their dreams despite being handicapped.

Though inserting prosthetics can be a costly affair, the benefits outweigh the cons.

In a nutshell, for people losing their arm or limb, prosthetics is the way forward to realize their dreams, for the sky to become their limit.