CRT Technology Showcase
Quokka Car Seat: Specialized Positioning for Kids in Casts
While addressing hip dysplasia in young children
is crucial, spica casting creates new challenges
for patients and families, including how to safely
transport a casted child home from the hospital.
Some hospitals offer loaner car seats, but they usually
require rolling up towels and stuffing them into the seat
to prop up the child. Car seats aren’t crash tested with
this makeshift positioning in place, and since kids can
remain in casts for months, families are forced to roll up
towels each time the child is in the car.
Enter the Quokka, Convaid’s new car seat that fits
children today while they’re spica casted, and afterward,
once their casts are off.
A Positioning Demand with Few Answers
The Quokka — named after an adorably photogenic
Australian marsupial — isn’t the first time Etac, Convaid’s
parent company, has developed a car seat for kids
in casts. Etac also owns R82, which previously sold the
Hippo, a car seat that could accommodate casted kids.
When the Hippo went off the market, Convaid looked into
creating a new car seat that could serve these kids and
improve on what had come before.
Laina Brock, Global Product Manager for Convaid,
said the Convaid team saw a definite need for a car seat
that accommodated casts. “The ones on the market
were very cumbersome and hard to use, very heavy,”
she said. “It was making what was already hard — a
surgery on a kid that’s going to be put into a cast — even
harder because now you don’t know if you can safely
transport them back home.”
Car seat policies also complicate matters. “A lot of
laws are being passed that a child under 2 years of
age has to be in a reverse-facing car seat unless they
outweigh everything on the market, and that’s hard
because there’s such a small number of car seats that
allow for a kid in a cast,” Brock said. “Yes, my kid is too
big for the casted car seats, but they’re not too big
for the normal car seats. But I don’t want to transport
them [in a regular car seat] because it’s not ready for
a casted kid. But under the law, that car seat still has to
be used.”
Quokka’s Quintessential Qualities
Along with the car seat itself — Convaid chose a smaller,
shorter shell for a more compact footprint — the Quokka
system includes modular triangular wedges that can
be configured into larger triangles or cubes as needed
for the best fit. “The safety of the child in the car seat
increases as more of the kid’s surface area is touching
the car seat,” Brock explained. “If you’re in a wreck, how
little will this kid move? That’s what the wedge system
does: When legs are casted at a certain angle, they
can’t be put all the way back into that seat. The wedge
creates a 45° angle where their whole backside can be
in contact with that seat. You can rearrange the wedge
in whatever way you need. It’s all about getting greater
surface area contact.”
To accommodate kids of varying ages and sizes,
Quokka can be used forward or rear facing. “I think the
Quokka came out at a really good time, just as doctors
are starting to cast at younger and younger [patient]
ages,” Brock noted. “The need for smaller car seats
with a really low weight capacity, which the Quokka has, is going to be more and more
needed.”
Once the child is out of the cast,
the positioning wedges can be
removed, and the Quokka can function
as a standard car seat. It’s been
crash tested with and without the
wedge system. The Quokka is for kids
weighing 5 to 39.6 lbs., up to 41" tall.
Flexibility Today & Tomorrow
Ease of use is key to any successful
pediatric product, and Quokka “uses
a common European LATCH system,
which most car seats nowadays do,”
Brock said. Quokka fits into a single
passenger seat, and its small size
also makes it easy to handle and
transport.
The Quokka car seat can be used as a
standard car seat after the child is out of the
spica cast.
Quokka is designed to accommodate
a wide range of casts, because
of two truths: Every kid is different,
and no two doctors will cast a kid
exactly the same way.
“The cast can go all the way up to
the torso, or it can stop at the belly
button,” Brock said. “Kids can be flat
casted, splayed, with bent knees.”
The Quokka and its wedge system
can handle it. But as an added best
practice, Brock noted, “We’re trying
to encourage CPSTs [Car Passenger
Safety Technicians] or those who
work with these hospital programs
to talk with the physicians before
they do the casting, because while
the doctor has their way of casting
that kid and they’ve seen really
good outcomes, there’s always a
zone of where they can bend that
knee or bend that hip. We’ve talked
to a number of physicians who are
willing to align the hip angle with the
Quokka angle, and it has led to so
much better fittings to get into the
Quokka. I wouldn’t ask the doctor to
do that if we had a spectrum of car
seats for these children to sit in. But
we don’t. If the physician is willing to
cast the kids so they can correctly sit
in that chair, let’s all work together
for the safety of this child and the
convenience of the family.”
At a time when families are
dealing with so much — doctor visits,
hospital stays, casting after-care,
follow-up appointments — being
able to choose and stick with one
car seat that’s easy to use while the
child is casted and after the cast is
off is one less thing to worry about.
The Quokka can offer optimal,
functional seating that the family
and healthcare team can support.
(The Wallaroo car seat is Quokka’s
“larger” teammate, accommodating
children weighing 22-106 lbs. Like the
Quokka, Wallaroo has removable
spica systems and wedge inserts.)
As Brock said, “Everyone should be
caring about how that kid can most
safely get home.”
This article originally appeared in the March 2020 issue of Mobility Management.