e-OPRA

Magnus Niska is a Swedish nature boy who loves skiing and snowmobiling as much as the peace and quiet of fishing. He lives in Haparanda with his partner and their three children. For seven years now, he has been mastering his everyday life with his osseointegrated prosthesis with sensory feedback. “After an accident, a tumour grew in my right arm so that my forearm had to be amputated,” he describes this life-defining change.

Competing in the CYBATHLON 2016 and CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition motivated and inspired him. However, he was not entirely satisfied with his third place at both competitions and is eager to compete again.

Osseointegration as a medical technique has been developed in the 1960ies and initially made a name for itself with dental implants. Later, the research shifted towards prostheses and their attachment to the bone. Today, the OPRA team relies on their intelligent technology, which makes sensory feedback possible in everyday life thanks to implanted electrodes. "Prostheses often have difficulties in their implementation in clinical use, mostly due to reliability problems. Osseointegration solves this problem and enables us to use implantable neuromuscular interfaces in everyday life. We want to help patients regain the functionality lost through amputation and thus improve their quality of life," says team manager Max Ortiz Catalan.