FES treatment 'reduces disability in spinal cord injury'RSS Feed

A new treatment which uses tiny bursts of electricity could drastically improve the lives of patients with spinal injury, research has shown.

The study, published online in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, found that they could improve the grasping ability in those with incomplete spinal injury through the use of functional electrical stimulation (FES).

FES therapy, which uses low electrical pulses to reawaken paralysed muscles, was found to significantly reduce disability in those with the spinal injury.

Lead author Dr Milos R Popovic of Toronto Rehab said: "This study proves that by stimulating peripheral nerves and muscles, you can actually retrain the brain.

"A few years ago, we did not believe this was possible."

This comes after researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands developed a simple model able to predict which spinal injury patients will walk again unaided and which will require assistance.

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Posted by Paul Breen
 

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