Do you have red marks on your residual limb after you take off your prosthetic leg?
There are 5 main reasons why this can happen.
1.) The prosthesis is poorly fit in the first place.
2.) This is normal pressures that come from within the prosthetic leg and they will go away after 15-20 minutes usually.
3.) Your residual limb has shrunk and now the socket that used to be a great fit is no longer helping you and there is “play” inside the socket.
4.) Your gel liner needs to be cleaned regularly and it is not getting the attention it needs in this regard.
5.) You have an infection that is making the skin at the incision line “angry”.
Are there other reasons why your leg might be red? Possibly.
But these are the big ones in our experience.
Usually, though, if you saw a licensed prothetist the leg should not fit poorly. We recommend staying away from a 3D printed one at the time of this writing, however cool the media makes them out to be. Unless it was 3D printed by a prosthetic company with licensed practitioners.
We have to remember that pressures are going on inside of the prosthesis, also.
You are bearing weight through the device for perhaps many hours per day and you can not expect for this to not leave a red mark of some kind.
The difference though is that some red marks are not bad to tolerable, while others are bad.
If the red mark is not going away after 2o minutes, or if it is pinpointed pressure that looks extremely “angry” then you might develop a more serious skin issue as a result.
This is when you should call you prosthetist.