Health News You Can Use | Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation

each year nearly 18 000 people in the u.s suffer a spinal cord injury which can be debilitating or even paralyzing but there is hope for those who do as we kick off national rehabilitation awareness month we're talking about the importance of rehab for spinal cord injuries and how it can help restore function and improve independence as well as some of the unique equipment and capabilities at st luke's [Music] with me today is dr vanessa leah fellowship trained spinal cord injury physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at st louis rehabilitation institute thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me so first dr lee what are the most common causes of spinal cord injuries so for many years the most common cause has been motor vehicle accidents increasing in frequency recently are falls this is especially as our population ages people often have arthritis in their neck and when they fall just from a ground level fall they can have a hyper extension injury and can have a spinal cord injury also in kansas city we have a lot of violence we take care of a lot of patients after gunshot wounds we also take care of patients after sporting accidents which could be like football skiing atv accidents and then we have some non-traumatic injuries like patients who have metastatic cancers and have tumors near their spine okay very interesting so explain the two main types of spinal cord injuries and what those can impact yeah so we classify injuries first off based on the level so if it's up near their neck or in their mid back or low back which level the spine is damaged but then the big classification is incomplete or complete injuries the big difference is that a complete injury is we talk about like severing of the spine and that there is no signal from the brain to below that level of injury and those types of injuries there's not a lot of hope for movement and sensation to come back and so in that case we're working with what that patient has when they arrive the other half is the incomplete injury this is more of the non-traumatic injuries or tumors of the spine these patients may have some movement or some sensation below the level but it's a very wide spectrum as far as how impacted they are and these patients have a lot of hope for recovery of movement and sensation throughout rehab and even for a year after that okay so why is rehabilitation key after a spinal cord injury how can therapy help restore function or improve independence and quality of life so for each patient we create an individualized plan of care for them as soon as we meet them here on rehab we talk about what's important to them what do they like to do what did they need to do before they had their injury and how do we get them back to doing that and so there's a really important large team that works together here at the st lux rehab institute to do that so it consists of our nursing staff respiratory therapy physical occupational and speech therapy and we're looking at all of the things that they need to do on a day-to-day basis some of that are things that are just for fun like getting back to sports some of it is taking care of their family but a lot of it is just taking care of themselves in their new deficits or their new body so some of that team are physical therapists they work on things like mobility so for patients who still have movement in their leg we're going to work on walking strengthening working on endurance some of our patients who don't have much movement we may be looking at devices so physical therapy helps to determine what kind of wheelchair that person needs and then we teach them how to get into the wheelchair and how to use it to get around for their day-to-day life and then occupational therapy works on things we call them activities of daily living so things we often take for granted like brushing your teeth washing your face getting yourself dressed also getting in and out of bed there's a little bit of overlap there and then speech therapy works on things like cognition many of our patients who had an accident may have also had a concussion or a brain injury and then some of our patients after surgery they can't even swallow when they first arrive so we're working on getting back to eating a regular diet and the whole team works very closely together along with our social workers and care coordinators to try to get these patients back home into their environment okay great okay let's talk about some of the unique state-of-the-art robotics equipment we have here in the inpatient gym how can these help with some spinal cord injury recoveries yeah so one great piece of equipment that you'll see behind us here is our safe gate system so this allows the therapist to work one-on-one with the patient without having to have multiple people to move each part of the patient's body and we can actually offload different percentages of the patient's body weight so as they get stronger we can put more of their body weight back through the harness and so it helps with balance it also helps with fall recovery as you'll see it grabs the patient and lifts them back up so we can actually practice how to prevent falls and we can even have a patient go all the way down to the floor and they can practice fall recovery and how to get off the floor if they were to happen to have a fall at home after they leave us now let's touch on some of the other robotics as well tell me about um the hydro works and the exoskeleton so the hydraworks is a really fascinating piece of equipment so it's a tank filled with water and it fills in just 90 seconds the water's changed between each patient so we don't have to worry about infection or any risk like that the patient gets into the device and they're able to move their body but we get to take a lot of gravity off through the water water can also be very healing because it can help with pain it can help with some of the spasticity that they're having and then there's a treadmill surface on the bottom that actually moves so they're walking in the water and it helps so much as they start to realize that they could get back to walking as they you know go through rehab and as their strength improves and the therapist is actually usually in the tank with them to help them move and to relearn that balance and coordination wow fascinating and lastly the exoskeleton the exoskeleton is something a device that actually goes on the patient and it's adjusted so that it can help to provide that extra strength that the patient doesn't have and so it bends at their natural joints everything's adjusted perfectly to for each individual patient and then it helps to move the patient and then it we can decrease how much it's helping as the patient gets stronger and can provide more of that assistance on their own okay great so what else set saintlix rehabilitation institute apart in treating these spinal cord injuries so i think the biggest highlight is that we have a very specialized team to take care of these patients from our nurses to our all of our therapists and our care coordination team and then the physician we are all specially trained in doing advanced education for spinal cord injuries specifically these patients are very unique and they're often very complex and so for example i did an entire year of fellowship just to become an expert in spinal cord injury specifically it's also very important that these patients can be taken care of here on inpatient rehab and then we can follow them long term throughout their outpatient needs for wheelchair clinic and spasticity and all of their ongoing needs as an outpatient historically before we started to develop this spinal cord injury program of excellence here at st luke's these patients were having to go out of the city and even out of the state to receive these cares so we're hoping to establish a great program here so that patients and their families don't have to uproot as they're going through their recovery absolutely so what's your final message to those who have suffered a spinal cord injury or have a loved one who has suffered one of these injuries so we always want to emphasize that there's hope a lot is lost when someone has a spinal cord injury it could be their loss of sensation their strength their ability to control their bowel and bladder and all of the things that they contribute to society and their family they feel like it's hopeless and that they are not able to do those things anymore we want to emphasize that we can help them get back to whatever it is they want to do if that's you know being a parent or going back to work or being an athlete all of those things are definitely possible and we want to help them through their therapy and help them work through this loss that they've had and getting back to what's important to them in their everyday life okay great well thank you so much for joining us thank you very much to learn more about st luke's rehabilitation institute visit st luke's kc.org rehab institute you can also stay up to date with all the latest health news from st luke's at stlukeskc.org news thanks again for watching we'll see you next time on health news you can use [Music]

Channel: Saint Luke's Health System

Views: 481

Keywords: Saint Luke’s Health System, Saint Luke’s Health News, Health News You Can Use, Saint Luke’s Hospital, Health News, Health, Saint Luke’s South Hospital, Saint Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, Rehab Institute, Kansas City rehabilitation, Kansas City rehab institute, rehabilitation, spinal cord injury, spinal cord injuries, spinal cord injury rehabilitation, spinal cord injury rehab

Id: 4i8vbPRjoRs

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022