Deans' stroke musings: The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation after stroke: early findings from a clinical study

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation after stroke: early findings from a clinical study

Which other walking exoskeletons is your hospital testing for survivors?

1. 10 Exoskeletons to Make You Superhuman

2. Science doing miracles with the new robotic exoskeleton - REX Bionics

3. DARPA is funding the development of a soft, fabric-based exoskeleton

4. LOPES Robotic Exoskeleton Helps Stroke Victims Walk Again

5. Walk Again Project

6. Honda Walking Assist Device

7. Cyberdyne exoskeleton

8. Multi-function robotic exoskeleton REX

9. Korean Factory Workers Don Exoskeletons for Superhuman Strength

10. Gait training early after stroke with a new exoskeleton - the hybrid assistive limb: a study of safety and feasibility

I bet your therapy department has none of these and will never be able to justify the cost to the higher ups.

The latest one here:

The H2 robotic exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation after stroke: early findings from a clinical study

Magdo Bortole¹²^*, Anusha Venkatakrishnan²⁴, Fangshi Zhu², Juan C Moreno¹, Gerard E Francisco³, Jose L Pons¹ and Jose L Contreras-Vidal²

* Corresponding author: Magdo Bortole m.bortole@csic.es

Author Affiliations

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Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 2015, 12:54 doi:10.1186/s12984-015-0048-y
Published: 17 June 2015

Abstract

Background

Stroke significantly affects thousands of individuals annually, leading to considerable physical impairment and functional disability. Gait is one of the most important activities of daily living affected in stroke survivors. Recent technological developments in powered robotics exoskeletons can create powerful adjunctive tools for rehabilitation and potentially accelerate functional recovery. Here, we present the development and evaluation of a novel lower limb robotic exoskeleton, namely H2 (Technaid S.L., Spain), for gait rehabilitation in stroke survivors.

Methods

H2 has six actuated joints and is designed to allow intensive overground gait training. An assistive gait control algorithm was developed to create a force field along a desired trajectory, only applying torque when patients deviate from the prescribed movement pattern. The device was evaluated in 3 hemiparetic stroke patients across 4 weeks of training per individual (approximately 12 sessions). The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Houston. The main objective of this initial pre-clinical study was to evaluate the safety and usability of the exoskeleton. A Likert scale was used to measure patient’s perception about the easy of use of the device.

Results

Three stroke patients completed the study. The training was well tolerated and no adverse events occurred. Early findings demonstrate that H2 appears to be safe and easy to use in the participants of this study. The overground training environment employed as a means to enhance active patient engagement proved to be challenging and exciting for patients. These results are promising and encourage future rehabilitation training with a larger cohort of patients.

Conclusions

The developed exoskeleton enables longitudinal overground training of walking in hemiparetic patients after stroke. The system is robust and safe when applied to assist a stroke patient performing an overground walking task. Such device opens the opportunity to study means to optimize a rehabilitation treatment that can be customized for individuals.

Trial registration: This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02114450).

I think this is a picture of it from here; http://www.technaid.com/en/products/exoskeleton