An orthosis designed at San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center provides a spring-like motion
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Running Speed
More than 200 troops have gone through BAMC's Return to Run program since 2009; of those, 97--including Navy SEALs, Rangers and Special Forces soldiers--have sought and received the go-ahead to return to active duty, where they are jumping out of planes and fast-roping out of helicopters.
The BAMC specialists have been so successful in treating limb-salvage patients that they're now inundated with requests, but Blanck's shop can handle only about 25 cases at a time. "The problem is, this is not an official program, so there's been no initial funding," Hsu says.
The Return to Run team, which has applied for grants to fund larger studies, hopes to replicate its training platform at other military bases and eventually create a version that can be used in the civilian world. If the clinical trials are successful, insurance companies might take an interest in their work. According to a study conducted at the University of Michigan, when prosthesis-related costs are taken into account, the lifetime health care cost for patients who undergo an amputation can be two to three times as high as that of limb-salvage patients, depending on how long they live. Because each IDEO is custom-made, they would be expensive in the civilian market but would likely cost less than prostheses in the long run.
BAMC already knows its program can work on non-war-related injuries. Sergeant William Porter, a helicopter mechanic in the Marine Corps, had returned from his third Iraq tour when a dirt-bike crash near Miramar, Calif., resulted in partial paralysis in his left foot. Porter's orthopedic surgeon told him about BAMC, where Blanck fitted him with an IDEO, and Porter was soon back to running more than three miles. He passed his physical-fitness exam and has returned to full duty. "Had I not done that, I'd probably be on my way out of the Marine Corps," Porter says.
Returning to active duty isn't the only goal. "It's about getting back to life," Blanck says. "Playing softball. Just being a coach for their kid's soccer or T-ball team. It's amazing how demoralizing that can be if you can't do that."
For Ryan, a Green Beret sergeant who requested that TIME not print his last name out of concern for the safety of his unit, keeping his leg was the first battle. On Sept. 11, 2010, he stepped into a doorway to fire at an insurgent in Afghanistan's Helmand province and had both bones in his lower right leg blown out by an improvised explosive device. The eruption tore off the bottom of his foot and mangled 95% of the flesh below his knee. Eight days after his injury, Ryan landed in front of Hsu. "It was week by week whether I'd have an amputation for six months," Ryan says.
After Hsu saved his leg, Ryan attacked his rehabilitation with the same fervor that had driven him to the Special Forces in the first place. He tried walking while still in a stabilizing brace with pins and screws in his bones, but he could muster only "a very aggressive walk," he says, "and that would ruin me for the rest of the day." Then Blanck fitted Ryan with an IDEO. "I couldn't believe it," Ryan says. "All of a sudden I can walk normally. I can jog. I can sprint and jump. It was a really weird feeling because I was limited for over a year. It was something else."