A woman has become the first person in Sweden to undergo a pioneering amputation designed to help patients better control future prosthetic limbs.
Amélie underwent the advanced AMI below-knee amputation after suffering more than two decades of chronic pain following a trampoline accident as a child.
The 32-year-old had originally been scheduled for a traditional below-knee amputation before surgeons offered her the opportunity to undergo the cutting-edge procedure instead.
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AMI – Agonist-Antagonist Myoneural Interface – reconnects muscle pairs during surgery to help maintain communication between the limb and the brain.
The technique is designed to improve prosthetic control and reduce phantom limb pain.
Amélie, who is based in Stockholm and Verbier, Switzerland, told Need To Know: “Originally, I broke my leg on a trampoline when I was 10 years old.
“Twenty-one years, many surgeries, revised surgeries, deformation and chronic pain was what led to the decision of amputation.”
The surgery took place on 9 January at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset in Huddinge.
Amélie said: “Just before the amputation was scheduled, my surgeon from Karolinska called and asked me if I wanted to wait one more month and then undergo AMI below-knee amputation instead.
“A specialist would then be able to come up to Sweden from Germany to perform the surgery.
“Before this I had never heard of the AMI method.”
According to Amélie, the operation lasted just over three hours.
Unlike traditional amputations, muscles are linked together in pairs using tendons to create communication between opposing muscle groups.
The skier said the first days after surgery were “excruciating”.
She said: “I had a spinal anaesthetic that mostly numbed the wrong leg and made it feel like I was paralysed from the hip down.
Amelie said she suffered from “extreme pain, could not sleep and not move,” adding: “But after around three days it started calming down.”
She also experienced severe phantom limb pain during recovery.
She said: “I constantly felt burning and small explosions from different parts of the foot that no longer existed.”
Despite the difficult recovery, Amelie says the operation has already transformed her life.
Before the amputation, she struggled to walk without crutches due to chronic pain.
Now, just over four months later, she is learning to walk with a prosthetic leg and says she can already feel the benefits of the AMI muscle system.
Amélie said: “When I move the muscles, I can feel my ‘foot’ moving.
“I can flex the ‘foot’ up, down and sideways.
“This gives me the feeling that my foot really still is there.”
She is currently using a traditional prosthetic while waiting for future technology capable of fully utilising the AMI system.
Amélie hopes the procedure will eventually help her return to freeride skiing and kitesurfing.
She said: “My dream is to get a prosthetic that is made for skiing.
“I believe that such prosthetic probably will be better than my painful foot, without the ability to flex forward, ever was.”
Amelie revealed one of the biggest changes since the operation is finally being free from the chronic pain that dominated her life for years.
She added: “For the first time in years, I can sleep without waking up every hour from pain in the foot from when the cover touches the foot, or anything that triggered the pain.”
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