Walking on a beach in summer, playing in the water with family or friends, those ordinary moments for valid people are dreams impossible to realize for amputees. Being myself in this case (I have a femoral prosthesis), I looked for a swim prosthesis for many years. A few years ago I purchased a so-called « swim-prosthesis » . Aesthetic was very basic and practical use also. This prosthesis filled with water to compensate for buoyancy. While leaving water, I had to wait until the leg drained by a hole bored on the ankle, a strange show for people around! Manufacturers probably forgot that we also have to walk. This prosthesis was so basic that walking with ,in or out of water, was really exhausting. I thus gave up the idea of going to the beach in summer with friends and family. I thought about many techniques to waterproof an existing prosthesis but ran up against impossibility of testing these techniques without damaging my own walking prostheses. During years I didn't succeed in waking up my prosthesists interests to my concerns. The products found on Internet were not appropriate to me because no manufacturer seemed to be interested in both practical and aesthetic concerns of a waterproof leg prosthesis.

Until this day... when I met a prosthetist listening to his patients concerns. My project interested him and we decided trying to waterproof my second prosthesis. After a few months of researches, the first AQUA-Leg prototype was created in 2007, following two criteria:

• being able to walk with easily a whole day long, in and out of water
• being aesthetically close to a real leg, enough to become « invisible » to other people