BACKGROUND

Prolonged bed rest without adequate mobilization is often associated with increased risk of pressure sores/ulcers for patients. Many patient supports (e.g., mattresses) are designed to minimize pressure on a patient's body yet remain inadequate. Ideally, a patient support should have an indentation force deflection (IFD) curve with a nearly uniform pressure plateau over a wide range of displacements that result from patients of varying body weights using the patient support. Instead, many patient supports tend to have an extended elastic response (for lighter weight patients) or densification and bottoming out of the patient support (for heavier weight patients). Both scenarios are undesirable. See the notations inFIG. 10, for example. Moreover, many patient supports suffer from what is known in the art as “hammocking” and do not spread out tissue interface pressures (TIPs) sufficiently to avoid pressure sores/ulcers.

Some patient supports include a topper disposed on top of a core to ameliorate some of the undesirable conditions mentioned above. Such designs, however, typically lack a clear pressure plateau that is measureable. Many toppers produce a “hump-dip” shaped IFD curve (again, seeFIG. 10) based on one of several types of undesirable buckling behaviors of the core.

A patient support designed to address one or more of the aforementioned deficiencies is desired.

