WVU student invents device to help amputees

WVU student invents device to help amputees
May 21, 2012
By David Templeton
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

She went to Walter Reed Hospital. She saw a medical mystery. She developed a treatment.

In an "I came, I saw, I conquered" scenario, Katherine Bomkamp, daughter of an Air Force lieutenant colonel, has invented the Pain Free Socket -- a heating device to be incorporated into prosthetic limbs to treat phantom pain, which a high percentage of people with amputations experience in their nonexistent limbs.

Her well-documented saga began five years ago when she was just 15. Because her father worked at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., she went to the military hospital for medical appointments. There she encountered young soldiers who'd returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with amputated limbs.

"That really affected me," she said. "I would talk to them, and they would tell me about their experience with phantom pain."

Seeing soldiers with amputations "started a train of thought."
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