Cast fixation is a general clinical skill used for the treatment of fractures. However, it may cause many complications due to careless treatment procedures. Currently, swathing a cast for a patient can only be determined by a doctors’ experience; however, this cannot be determined by the value of pressure, temperature, or humidity with objective and reliable equipment. When swathing a cast for a patient, the end result is often too tight or too loose. Hence, in this paper we developed a sensor for detecting pressure, temperature, and humidity, respectively. This could provide reliable reference cast data to help physicians to understand the tightness of cast swathing and to adjust the tightness of cast swathing instantly to alleviate a patient’s complications caused by excessive pressure or overheating. In this paper, six pressure sensors and one temperature–humidity sensor are used to detect the pressure, temperature, and humidity in an arm swathed with a cast to confirm whether the tightness of the cast is fixing the fracture efficiently, while avoiding causing any damage by using excessive pressure. Currently, the variation in temperature and humidity can be detected by the inflammation of the wound, displaying secretions, and fever in the cast. Based on the experiments, the voltage and power conversion coefficients of the developed sensors could be compensated for by the nonlinear error of the sensor. The experimental results could be instantly displayed on a human interface, such as a smart mobile device. The average skin pressure in a swathed cast was 12.14 g and ranged from 5.0 g to 17.5 g. A few casts exceeded 37.50 g. The abnormal pressure of wrinkles produced during swathing a cast often ranged from 22.50 g to 38.75 g. This shows that cast wrinkles cause pressure on the skin. The pressure caused by cast wrinkles on bone protrusions ranged from 56.5 g to 84.4 g. Compared to other parts that lacked soft skin cushioning, the pressure of cast wrinkles that occurred in the ulna near the protrusion of the wrist bone increased averagely. The pressure error value was less than 2%, the temperature error was less than 1%, and the humidity error was less than 5%. Therefore, they were all in line with the specifications of commercially available products. The six pressure detection points and one temperature and humidity detection point in our newly designed system can accurately measure the pressure, temperature, and humidity inside the cast, and instantly display the corresponding information by mobile APP. Doctors receive reliable reference data and are instantly able to understand the tightness of the swathed cast and adjust it at any time to avoid complications caused by pressure or overheating due to excessive pressure.

In order to ameliorate the anterior knee pain or peripheral pain around the tibia caused by patellar lateral subluxation, we evaluated the kick training effects of standing or sitting postures in strengthening the vastus medialis obliquus (VMO) on the quadriceps femoris muscle. A total of 83 subjects (45 male; 38 female) in both sitting and standing positions performed 10° to 90° leg lift and kick training. Among the male group, the effect of the sitting posture was better than that of the standing posture, 74.31% of the former achieved the training goal. In the female group, the effect of a standing posture was better than that of a sitting posture, for which only 37.71% of the latter achieved the training purpose. However, a ratio of 84.34% in the female group showed that the strength of VMO on the quadriceps femoris muscle generated by leg kicking was greater than the strength generated by walking. While it was impossible to immediately achieve a greater effect of VMO on the quadriceps femoris muscle than vastus lateralis on the quadriceps femoris muscle, leg kicking did achieve the objective of enhancing the strength of VMO on the quadriceps femoris muscle.

In the real condition, the small sensor found it difficult to detect the position of the pressure sore because of casting displacement clinically. The large sensor will detect the incorrect pressure value due to wrinkles without close to arm. Hence, we developed a simulated arm with physiological sensors combined with an APP and a cloud storage system to detect skin pressure in real time when applying a short arm cast or splint. The participants can apply a short arm cast or splint on the simulative arm and the pressure in the cast or splint could be immediately displaced on the mobile application. The difference of pressure values from six pressure detection points of the simulated arm between the intern and the attending physician with 20-year working experience were 22.8%, −7.3%, 25.0%, 8.6%, 38.2%, 49.6%, respectively. It showed that the difference of pressure values in two farthest points, such as radius stab and ulnar styloid, was maximal. The pressures on the skin surface of the short arm cast were within acceptable range. Doctors would obtain reliable reference data and instantly understand the tightness of the swathed cast which would enable them to adjust it at any time to avoid complications.

In this paper, we introduce a simple sound signal diagnostic method to evaluate anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury before and after reconstructive surgery. Sixty-five recruited participants were divided into control (n = 27) and experimental (n = 38) groups. Dynamic time warping of sound signals was applied to evaluate the healthy and injured limbs before surgery with those after surgery via analysis of variance and Z-test analysis. In the control group, the average differences among three sensing points ranged from 7.7 ± 3.4 to 18.9 ± 10.6, over the frequency range of 250 Hz to 4 kHz. In the experimental group, the average differences were between 6.2 ± 2.8 and 57.4 ± 21.3. The greatest significant wavelet coefficient difference was observed in the range of 125–250 Hz. Our preliminary results demonstrate that the proposed approach produces significant signal variations at the ACL test point (TP_ACL) with regard to identifying ACL injury, with swing cycles conducted within the 4-kHz band of 1–7 wavelet coefficients. Thus, wavelet analysis of knee sound can be used to evaluate the recovery status after single ACL reconstruction surgery. After a 1-year follow-up of the 38 patients with ACL injury, the frequency band difference among sensing points was reduced from 274% to approximately 600%.