Celebrating 20 Years of Alpha® Liners
Since becoming a transtibial amputee in the early 1950s, Jeff Witt struggled to find comfort in his prosthesis. The stump socks he used would wrinkle and cause sores on his residual limb. The advent of silicone liners didn’t bring Jeff any comfort either.
“My skin could not stand the conventional silicone liner,” shared Jeff. The interface material was a source of constant irritation, pinching, and sores. “It limited my activity.”
Jeff wasn’t alone in his prosthetic struggles. Bruce, an amputee from Montana, had an idea to hopefully solve this sort of problem. In 1994, the unassuming Montanan wearing a lumberjack shirt and beat-up jeans visited WillowWood. He claimed that a gel-lined sock would work better for amputees than the socks that were available at the time.
“It’s not every day that a six-foot, eight-inch fishing guide from a remote part of Montana walks into my office and politely asks for a few minutes of my time,” recalls Bob Arbogast, president of WillowWood at that time. “I felt compelled to listen. And keep in mind that the invention he subsequently proposed to me was intended to be in direct competition with prosthetic socks, a major profit generator of our company. I rarely gamble, so I have to believe that divine intervention was involved.”
WillowWood and Bruce promptly began working together to develop the concept that would come to market in 1996 as the revolutionary Alpha Liner.
“I’m pleased and grateful…to the team at WillowWood, to have been associated with the remarkable work of getting Alpha Liners on the market,” Bruce recently shared. “To take a risk around this idea…that is extremely rare, unusual, and courageous.”
In the twenty years since its debut, over two million Alpha Liners have helped amputees around the world find comfort and function in their prostheses. Originally available in only one thermoplastic elastomer, Alpha Liners are now offered in several different types of interface materials and profiles to meet the various needs of the amputee community. Alpha Liners are available for lower- and upper-limb use in both prefabricated and custom options.
For Jeff, the advent of Alpha Liners was a blessing. “The Alpha Liner products have given me the most mobility with the least amount of problems of any liner I have worked with in my 65 years of being an amputee,” he said. “As Alpha Liners have evolved, the Alpha SmartTemp® has become my favorite. I use the same liner over my 16-hour days. The Alpha Liner requires no adjustments except when my activity is above my normal level.”
“This has been an incredible time to be alive,” comments Bruce. “The rate of innovation happening within prosthetics demonstrates this.”
Whether developing a custom one-way stretch fabric or blending heat management technology with silicone, innovation within the Alpha product line continues. See the newest innovation in Alpha Liners at the WillowWood booth #1018 during the 2016 AOPA National Assembly this September.
