Deans' stroke musings: Inflatable soft wearable robot for reducing therapist fatigue during upper extremity rehabilitation in severe stroke

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.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Inflatable soft wearable robot for reducing therapist fatigue during upper extremity rehabilitation in severe stroke

I would think that survivor fatigue is a much more important item to solve. But then I'm just a stroke-addled survivor who obviously knows nothing. But stretching really does no good for spasticity, so why are you doing it?

Combined arm stretch positioning and neuromuscular electrical stimulation during rehabilitation does not improve range of motion, shoulder pain or function in patients after stroke: a randomised trial Nov. 2013

The latest here for some reason:

Inflatable soft wearable robot for reducing therapist fatigue during upper extremity rehabilitation in severe stroke

Author(s)
Ciaran Tomas O'Neill ; Tommaso Proietti ; Kristin Nuckols ; Megan E. Clarke ; Cameron J. Hohimer ; Alison Cloutier ; David J. Lin ; Conor J. Walsh
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Abstract:

Intense therapy is a key factor to improve rehabilitation outcomes. However, when performing rehabilitative stretching with the upper limb of stroke survivors, therapist fatigue is often the limiting factor for the number of repetitions per session. In this paper we present an inflatable soft wearable robot aimed at improving severe stroke rehabilitation by reducing therapist fatigue during upper extremity stretching. The device consists of a textile-based inflatable actuator anchored to the torso and arm via functional apparel. Upon inflation, the device created a moment of force about the glenohumeral joint to counteract effects of gravity and assist in elevating the arm. During a device-assisted (i.e. inflated) standard stretching protocol with a therapist, we showed increased range of motion across five stroke survivors, and reduced muscular activity and cardiac effort by the therapist, when comparing to a vented device condition. Our results demonstrate the potential for this technology to assist a therapist during upper extremity rehabilitation exercises and future studies will explore its impact on increasing dose and intensity of therapy delivered in a given session, with the goal of improving rehabilitation outcomes.
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters ( Early Access )
Page(s): 1 - 1
Date of Publication: 23 March 2020
ISSN Information:
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2982861
Publisher: IEEE