Getting enough sleep – and good, quality sleep – is essential for everyone. When your sleep is regularly disturbed, it can have profound and far reaching implications for long term health. One of our clients – a young man in his early 20s with multiple diagnosis who uses a complex moulded seat for daytime seating – was struggling to sleep well and needed help with his sleeping position.
The issue
LC Seating was contacted to see if we could review the client’s night-time positioning to help him get a good sleep. The therapist and client had tried numerous off-the-shelf sleep systems, none of which supported his trunk and head adequately because he often moved during the night.
The Assessment
We used our moulding bags to experiment with a supine lying position and we left the client (with his mother) to relax on the moulding bags for a number of hours to get some feedback. We positioned the client in a supine position on the moulding bags, with his upper body raised to about 25 degrees from horizontal. Throughout the day, we re-visited the room to adjust certain areas after we had progressed to other parts of his support. At the end of this process the client was very relaxed, and fell asleep in the moulding bags for a number of hours. His mother commented that this was the most comfortable she had seen him in a long time.
Our solution
With the client carefully lifted out of the mould, LC Seating scanned this mould to create a full-length lying support to be mounted inside a supportive shell which could be used on any flat surface.
Some adjustments were needed:
- We created a flat area with raised edges to allow the client to use different head/ neck supports as required and to prevent the head support cushion being pushed out of position during the night.
- The upper thighs tended to move to the right, so more lateral support was needed than originally moulded .
- To ensure adequate airflow, we installed a number of air vents into the side of the mould, and used multiple layers of a mesh-type spacer fabric for the cover to allow air movement.
The Result
The moulded lying support was finished by the skilled team of technicians at our Head Office in Sligo and was issued to the client with safety instructions on its use. The client has been using the support for increasing amounts of time, with very good results reported at every stage. The client’s mother has reported that he is sleeping for longer and also appears to be enjoying better quality sleep and has considerably more energy throughout the day. LC Seating made one adjustment to accommodate a prominent hip that was showing signs of redness. The client’s mother and the OT report it to be a very successful outcome with numerous, unexpected positive side-affects.
As LC Seating, we have a range of hi-tech manufacturing machinery to create custom sleeping and seating solutions to suit the needs of the user. We always aim to find solutions that are cost effective and beneficial to our clients.
Give us a call on 071 91 63905 or email us at info@lcseating.ie to find out how we can support your seating needs.