The Importance of Hooks

[Jon Kuniholm]

While I've complained about the fact that many of us are using hooks strongly resembling that designed by and still bearing the name of David Dorrance, who patented the split hook in 1912 and whose company survives today, there are many benefits to the design. There's a reason that some designs are enduring, and part of raising the bar in replacing the hook is considering the benefits that it offers. The cigarette notch in the hook, as demonstrated by Academy Award winner Harold Russell is but one of those features. Added after World War II, the renamed "pen notch" remains in current hooks. Dr. Harold Sears, who runs another subsidiary of the company that owns Hosmer-Dorrance, has been a long time proponent of hooks, and his company makes a popular electronic hook, worn by amputee-journalist Michael Weisskopf. Harold's interest in hooks began in graduate school at the University of Utah, where he finished his PhD in 1983. Harold's dissertation, entitled "Evaluation and Development of a New Hook-Type Terminal Device," enumerates and quantifies the value that a group of hook-using patients place on different features of production hooks and describes a redesign, a version of which may reach the market in the next couple of years. Harold has been kind enough to allow us to share his dissertation (36.6 MB) under a Creative Commons license, and some of you may find it interesting.
Jon

[Daniel Paulsen]

Thanks for sharing! One section of this paper that impacted me was the feedback from users that tried the different prototypes. I felt like I got some sense of the huge learning investment it takes for amputees to become adept at using a new device. I can also imagine that once a patient learns a device to the point where it becomes completely natural, I must be very difficult to unlearn that habits that they have spent so much effort to build up. This is a considerable barrier that must be considered for any new TD designs.