+1 (629)348-3199Hunova, a total body rehab platform: Clinical experience in Neuro Rehab
2nd International Conference on Central Nervous System and Therapeutics
June 10-11, 2019 | Edinburgh, Scotland
J A Saglia
Movendo Technology, Italy
Scientific Tracks Abstracts : J Neurol Neurorehabil Res
Abstract:
In the last two years, several studies and clinical trials were
run in order to evaluate and validate the use of the robotic
rehabilitation system hunova® [1] in different clinical settings
such as neurology, orthopedics, geriatrics and sport. In this
paper, an overview of clinical experiences and the main results
obtained in the field of neuro rehabilitation are presented.
Parkinson Disease: In Parkinson's disease, rehabilitation
aims to improve patients’ quality of life by promoting their
independence, safety and well-being [2,3]. To achieve these
goals, rehabilitation first aims to prevent and/or delay
inactivity, fear of moving or falling and to maintain and
enhance physical capacity; as the disease progresses, the goal
becomes to improve transfers, posture, balance, walking and
functional gestures [2].
A pilot study (ten subjects, 8M, mean age 72±6.84SD) with
a clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease were included in
this study with hunova®. The study was run in order to verify
the feasibility and effectiveness of an integrated traditionalrobotic
rehabilitation treatment in Parkinson's disease
patients.
Main results showed how the integration of traditional and
robotic treatment lead, compared to traditional treatment
only, to an improvement in the Timed Up and Go Test, to
greater pelvis mobility and stability with an improvement in
managing the load in sitting position, besides the maintenance
of the improvements obtained with traditional treatments on
balance, walking speed, stability limits and trunk mobility.
Results obtained highlight how the rehabilitation treatment
with hunova® can offer an innovative therapeutic opportunity
to be combined with traditional rehabilitation in subjects
affected by Parkinson's disease.
Stroke: Stroke survivors show greater postural oscillations
and altered muscular activation compared to healthy control
[4,5]. This altered condition results in difficulties in walking
and standing, and an increased risk of falls [6]. A proper
control of the trunk is related to a stable gait and to a lower
falling risk; to this extent, rehabilitative protocols are currently
working on core stability through abdominal, pelvic and
lumbar muscles reinforcement. The carried-out study aimed
at assessing the potential of hunova® in stroke rehabilitation,
with a focus on core stability and balance. Particularly, a
robot-assisted program was compared with conventional
rehabilitative treatment to determine whether robot-based
protocols can improve the recovery of chronic stroke patients.
An open randomized clinical trial was run, with recruitment
of thirty chronic stroke patients, randomly divided in two
groups, either underwent a traditional rehabilitative protocol
with physical therapists (control group: N=15 age mean
58.3±SD 7.6 years, 8 females, 8 left side affected), or a robotbased
program with hunova® (experimental group N=15 age
mean 63.3±SD 10.0 years, 5 females, 6 left side affected).
Main results showed how hunova® treatment was at least
comparable with traditional treatment, leading a better
improvement in stroke survivors in the experimental group
in standing dynamic balance test (reactive balance, balance
on an unstable base) and in proprioceptive control both in
standing and sitting positions, compared to the control group.
Results showed that hunova® is a promising tool for the
rehabilitation of stroke patients.
Spinal Cord Injury: In complete Spinal Cord Injury trunk
control is essential for daily life activities. When trunk control
is impaired the development of less effective compensatory
strategies is required. Impaired trunk control functional
implications are most evident in neurological conditions such
as spinal cord injury [7,8]. A study was carried out with the
aim to investigate the use of hunova® for assessment and
training of SCI subjects.
Eight subjects (5M 3F, mean time from disease 12±5.74, mean
age 46±10.6 years) in chronic condition, with complete lesion
(ASIA A-B) executed a 20 sessions training with hunova®
focused on balance, trunk control, dual-motor-task with
movements of the upper limbs, strengthening, core stability.
Main results showed that balance performance and trunk
control were correlated with the level of lesion. After the
training with hunova® subjects showed improvements
in trunk control measured both by clinical scales and by hunova® during active control tasks and balance tasks in
seated position.
Obtained results showed how hunova® can be a useful
rehabilitation tool for evaluation and training in spinal cord
injury.
Conclusions: hunova® can be a useful and powerful
rehabilitation tool for evaluation and training and a
considerable number of clinical trials have been set up
and will be completed to validate the technology. hunova®
allows to measure significant parameters of static and
dynamic stability and can centralize a complex progression
of exercises to recover trunk control and reactive balance
after traumatic injuries.
Biography:
Jody Alessandro Saglia is a mechatronic engineer with 15 years of academic and industrial experience. He graduated in Mechatronics Engineering at Polytechnic of Turin in 2007 and received his PhD degree in 2010 from King’s College London. He also received a Master Degree in Technology Transfer and Management of Innovation from the University of Genoa in 2014. He has been at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) since 2010, as a Postdoc researcher in the Department of Advanced Robotics and in 2014 contributed to the creation of the Rehab Technologies Facility and took the role of Principal Investigator, working on the design and development of rehabilitation and assistive technologies. Jody started to work on rehabilitation robotics, in particular on ankle rehabilitation in 2007 and led all the developments of the technology from a proof of concept to the CE marked product. He led a team of engineers and developers to design and build hunova, the first product of Movendo Technology. He is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Movendo Technology. Jody has published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers about robotics applied to rehabilitation and assistive applications and is inventor of 4 patents.
E-mail: jody.saglia@gmail.com
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