Skin Tones

Form should follow function. This is the premise underlying A Step Ahead's custom silicone skin cover system, The Skin Tones System for both upper and lower extremity amputees. Traditionally, patients are forced to choose between a great looking prosthesis on the one hand, and a highly functional one on the other. Our Skin Tones system bridges the gap between cosmesis and functionality. Skin Tones fits over the most technically advanced prosthetic technologies, maximizing your ability to function and protecting the underlying prosthetic components, all while looking startlingly real.

The Skin Tones System, developed by A Step Ahead Prosthetics and Orthotics, uses a unique silicone skin that covers the prosthesis, unifying form and function to create a prosthetic limb that looks natural and perfectly matches skin tones. The Skin Tones System also helps restore a normal look to body parts, such as the face or breast, that have been damaged by surgery or radiation therapy.

Patients who are missing a body part experience significant physical and emotional trauma. The missing part may be a hand, arm, leg, foot, breast, or facial area such as an ear or nose. Prosthetics and reconstructive surgery are the first steps to alleviating such trauma. Our Skin Tones System provides further relief with options that a cosmetic prosthesis can offer.

The process involves several steps: a life casting, which involves taking a mold of your sound limb (if you are a bilateral amputee, we utilize our substantial library to select a mold of someone who is the same age, build, and gender as you); fabricating the shin and foot sections; color matching your unique skin tones; and installing the finished system over your prosthesis. While this can take more than 100 hours of work from inception to installation, the resulting Skin Tones system fully replicates your missing anatomy.

Unlike other silicone systems, ours achieves 3 dimensional results as a result of our unique intrinsic painting process. Our technique prevents the Skin Tones system's colors from fading over time, ensuring longer product life. You can add and remove nail polish. The unique silicone formula used by our engineers makes Skin Tones resistant to newsprint and ink, permitting you to clean it without risk of altering the color or damaging the structural integrity of the cover.

We believe you should not have to sacrifice form for function. With the Skin Tones system, we are able to give you both. Click here to visit our Skin Tones photo gallery to see how Form Can Follow Function.