Two patients in an experimental rehabilitation program in Kentucky, in the United States, can walk again thanks to electrical stimulation of their spine, and two others get up or sit down, according to new results.
These achievements were published on Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, at the same time that the journal Nature Medicine published the case of another paraplegic treated by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minnesota) who managed to walk again thanks to an electrode implanted in the spine .
The Spine Research Center at the University of Louisville, Ky., Had already come out public in 2014 when they argued that people with leg paralysis had sensations through electrical stimulation.
This time they announced that after months of rehabilitation and thanks to an electrode in the spine connected to an implant in the abdomen, two participants had been able to walk again leaning on a walker or bars, and two others had managed to get up or sit down.
“The four participants can not do these actions when the stimulation stops,” detail the authors of the experiment.
The researchers do not fully understand the mechanisms of this revolutionary rehabilitation, but suggest that both patients were able to walk again because, although they were completely paralyzed, they had maintained some sensations below the level of their injury.
“The spine can relearn how to walk independently,” Susan Harkema, director of the research center, told NBC. “We can train her to work again, despite the injury that has disconnected her from the brain.”
Kelly Thomas, one of the two patients of the program, evoked an unforgettable experience.
“I will never forget the first day I could walk alone, it was an unforgettable moment of my rehabilitation, I was walking with the help of a therapist and the next minute I launched and continued on my own,” Thomas said in a statement.
Now he lives in his house, where, thanks to a walker, he moves from room to room and even goes out into the street. To accomplish this, he need only to turn on the electric stimulator, which he does with the use of a small remote control.
Each step remains a monumental effort. “It’s not a quick fix for paralysis,” he acknowledged to CNN. But “nothing else will stop me in life, because I made possible something that was believed impossible”.
