Design of anti-bedsore hospital bed

Abstract

An anti-bedsore bed is a medical device that prevents or delays occurrence of pressure ulcers by alleviating contact pressure exerted on a patient due to a contact with a bed. Normally a patient recovering in bed for an extended period of time will experience pressure ulceration due to insufficient blood flow to tissues in the areas that carry body weight. In this work, an extra bed setto be installed on a generic hospital bed has been designed to prevent pressure ulcers with a mechanism to change points of contact between body of patient and bed. The bed set consists of four sections for supporting a patient’s head, hip, thighs and heels. Changes in pressure on the patient’s body due to the movement of the bed set are measured by pressure films, and results are used in the assessment of the bed’s capability to prevent pressure ulcers by benchmarking with a risk curve for pressure ulcers in the literature. The test results confirm that the extra bed set can prevent pressure ulcers if the bed set operates at a 15-minute cycle.