Innovative Chair to Prevent Pressure Injuries in Persons Living with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

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Project Summary/Abstract The proposed project relates to developing and evaluating an innovative, inexpensive, easy-to-use chair aiming to reduce the prevalence of pressure injuries among persons living with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia (ADRD). The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality estimates that more than 2.5 million individuals in the United States develop pressure injuries annually, resulting in treatment costs exceeding $10 billion per year. The condition is painful, often difficult to treat, and over 60,000 people die due to pressure injuries each year in the United States alone. Persons living with ADRD, both in long term care facilities and private residences, are at an increased risk for pressure injury formation due to the deterioration of several neurophysiological subsystems associated with motor, sensory, autonomic, cognitive, or behavioral pathways. Physical repositioning is the cornerstone of pressure injury prevention (and mandated by government regulation in beds); however, several barriers exist to conducting frequent, scheduled repositioning of persons living with ADRD in chairs. Some interventional technologies that have been developed for bed mattresses including reactive foam, static air, water, fiber, gel surfaces, and air‐fluidized ceramic beads along with active approaches including alternating pressure air surfaces, large‐celled ripple mattresses. Active alternating pressure air surfaces are made of air‐cells that intermittently inflate and deflate via electrically powered air compressors to regularly redistribute the pressure under the body. These mattress developments are slowly being applied to chairs. Despite the advantages of alternating pressure air surfaces, this type of surface in a chair overlay is not in ordinary widespread use due to cost, patient discomfort associated with inflation/deflation motion, compressor noise, and energy consumption. We propose an innovative low-cost chair design approach that achieves the functionality of an alternative pressure surface mattress without the need for electricity or compressed air. We hypothesize that the proposed chair will be suitable for widespread adoption both in long-term care facilities and private residences. It will be particularly useful in low-resource care environments. A prototype chair will be developed and evaluated.