Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,699 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain!trillions and trillions of neuronsthatDIEeach day because there areNOeffective 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.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
The robot suit providing hope of a walking cure - Harvard Biodesign Lab,
Conor
Walsh’s laboratory at Harvard University is not your everyday research
centre. There are no bench-top centrifuges, no fume cupboards for
removing noxious gases, no beakers or crucibles, no racks of test tubes
and only a handful laptop computers. Instead, the place is dominated by
clothing.
On one side of the lab stands a group of mannequins dressed in
T-shirts and black running trousers. Behind them, there are racks of
sweatshirts and running shoes. On another wall of shelves, shorts and
leggings have been carefully folded and labelled for different-size
wearers. On my recent visit, one student was sewing a patch on a pair of
slacks.
Walk in off the street and you might think you had stumbled into a
high-class sports shop. But this is no university of Nike. This is the Harvard Biodesign Lab,
home of a remarkable research project that aims to revolutionise the
science of “soft robotics” and, in the process, transform the fortunes
of stroke victims by helping them walk again.
“Essentially, we are making clothing that will give power to people
who have suffered mobility impairment and help them move,” says
Professor Walsh, head of the biodesign laboratory. “It will help them
lift their feet and walk again. It is the ultimate in power-dressing.”
Last week, at a ceremony in Los Angeles, 35-year-old Walsh was awarded a Rolex award for enterprise
for his work. He plans to use the prize money – 100,000 Swiss francs
(about £82,000) – to expand “soft robotics” to develop suits that could
also enhance the ability of workers and soldiers to lift and carry
weights and also improve other areas of medical care, including
treatments for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, cerebral
palsy and other ailments that affect mobility.
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Walsh
is a graduate – in manufacturing and mechanical engineering – of
Trinity College Dublin. While a student, he became fascinated with
robotics after he read about the exoskeletons being developed in the
United States to help humans handle heavy loads. Essentially, an
exoskeleton is a hard, robot-like shell that fits around a user and
moves them about. Think of the metal suit worn by Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man or the powered skeletal frame Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens to deal with the acid-dribbling extraterrestrial that threatened her spaceship.
“I thought that it all looked really, really cool,” says Walsh. So he
applied, and was accepted, to study at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) under biomechatronics expert Professor Hugh Herr. But
when Walsh began working on rigid exoskeletons, he found the experience
unsatisfactory. “It was like being inside a robotic suit of armour. It
was hard, uncomfortable and ponderous and the suit didn’t always move
the way a human would,” he says.
So when Walsh moved to Harvard, where he set up the biodesign lab, he
decided to take a different approach to the problem. “I saw immediately
that if you had a softer suit that accentuated the right actions, was
comfy to wear and didn’t encumber you, it could have huge biomedical
applications,” he says. “I began to wonder: can we make wearable
robots soft?”
The answer turned out to be yes. Walsh, assisted by colleagues Terry
Ellis, Louis Award and Ken Holt of Boston University, worked with
experts in electronics, mechanical engineering, materials science and
neurology to create an ingenious, low-tech way to boost walking: the
soft exosuit. A band of cloth is wrapped around a person’s calf muscles.
Pulleys, made from bicycle brake cables, are attached to these calf
wraps and the other ends of the cables fitted to a power pack worn on a
patient’s back. When the wearer starts to lift his foot to take a step,
the power pack pulls the cables and this helps the wearer lift their
leg. Then, as their foot swings forward, another cable, attached to the
toecap of their shoes, tightens to help raise the toe so that it does
not drag on the ground as they swing their legs forward. This condition
is known as “foot drop” and it is a common difficulty for stroke
patients.
In this way, an often critical problem for someone who can no longer
control their muscles properly is alleviated. They can lift their legs
and, just as importantly, keep their toes from turning down so that they
do not drag on the ground and make them stumble. It is the perfect
leg-up, in short.
“Designing robotic devices that target specific joints just hadn’t
been done before,” says Walsh. “People had only looked at constructing a
full-leg exoskeleton. We are targeting just one joint, not a whole leg.
Crucially, in the case of strokes, it is the one that is often most
badly impaired. Also, we have managed to keep our materials very light
and easily wearable. Simple is best. That is our mantra.”
Originally, the pulleys that lifted the cables that helped wearers’
raise their legs and toes were powered by a trolley-like device that
trundled alongside them. One of the key improvements involved in Walsh’s
project has been to reduce that power pack to a size that can be worn
reasonable comfortably. The unit weighs 10lbs (4.5kg) and Walsh expects
his team will be able to make further reductions in the near future.
“Motors are going to get lighter, batteries are going to get lighter.
That will all be of great benefit, without doubt.”
The packs are also fitted with devices known as inertial measurement
units (IMU), which analyse the forces created by foot movements and
raise and lower the brake-cable pulleys. These sensors have to work with
millisecond accuracy for the system to work properly. “Timing is
absolutely critical,” says Walsh.
Test runs have already proved successful, however. Videos of stroke
patients wearing soft exosuits and walking on treadmills reveal a marked
improvement in their movement. Once fitted with the suits, they no
longer clutch the handrails and their strides become much quicker and
more confident. “We are not saying our system is the only solution to
impaired mobility,” adds Walsh. “There will always be a place for hard
exoskeleton power suits, for example, for people who are completely
paralysed. But for less severe problems, soft robotic suits, with their
lightness and flexibility, are a better solution.”
Every year, about 110,000 people suffer a stroke in the UK. Most patients survive but strokes are still the third-largest cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, in this country.
Strokes occur when the blood supply to the brain is stopped due to a
blood clot or when a weakened blood vessel bursts. One impact affects
how muscles work. As the Stroke Association
points out, your brain sends signals to your muscles, through your
nerves, to make them move. A stroke, in damaging your brain, disrupts
these signals. Classic symptoms include foot drop and loss of stamina.
Patients feel tired and become more clumsy, making it even more
difficult to control their movements.
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“Patients
often withdraw from life. They stop going out and miss out on all sort
of social events – their grandchildren’s sports events or parties,” says
Ignacio Galiana of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
at Harvard University, which is also involved in the soft exosuit
project. “They prefer to stay at home and to stop exercising because it
is so tiring and draining. They withdraw from the world. By making it
possible to walk normally again we hope we can stop that sort of
thing happening.”
The soft exosuits will not be worn all of the time, it is thought,
but instead be put on for a few hours so patients can get out of their
homes without exhausting themselves. The devices should also help in
physiotherapy sessions aimed at restoring sufferers’ ability to walk.
“This is a new tool that will greatly extend and accelerate
rehabilitation therapy for stroke patients,” says Walsh. “Patients no
longer have to think about the process of moving. It starts to come
naturally to them, as it was before they had their stroke.”
As to timing, Walsh envisages that his team will be able to get their
prototypes on to the market in about three years. Nor will soft
exoskeleton use be confined to stroke cases. “Cerebral palsy,
Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, old age: patients with any
of these conditions could benefit,” adds Walsh. “When muscles no longer
generate sufficient forces to allow people to walk, soft, wearable
robots will be able to help them.”
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