Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in inducing people with an amputated arm to experience a prosthetic rubber hand as belonging to their own body. The results can lead to the development of a new type of touch-sensitive prosthetic hands.

Motorized prosthetic arms can help amputees regain some function, but these devices take time to learn to use and are limited in the number of movements they provide.

Doctors from Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital are calling for patients to volunteer for the trial of a new treatment which it hopes will save patients legs from being amputated.

The first prosthetic to provide propulsion for walking will be demonstrated by an Iraq War veteran and amputee at a media event to be held at 9:30 a.m. Monday, July, 23, 2007, at the Providence VA Medical Center. The prototype ankle-foot was created under a collaborative research initiative that includes the Providence VA Medical Center, Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Researchers at Scholl College's Center for Lower Extremity Ambulatory Research (CLEAR) at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Texas A&M University have presented important new information that could help physicians and their patients predict dangerous recurrent wounds that precede amputations in persons with diabetes.

Spreading honey on a diabetic ulcer could prevent the need to amputate an infected foot, researchers say. A doctor at the University of Wisconsin who helped about half a dozen of her diabetic patients avoid amputation has launched a controlled trial to promote the widespread use of honey therapy.