Tyler Harrell, 7, will have surgery to repair nerve damage to his arm on January 7.
Unable to dress or bathe himself Tyler wears a brace around his upper body and left shoulder in order to keep his shoulder in place. He wears braces on his legs to keep him stable enough to walk.
Despite doctors’ predictions four years ago that he would never lead a normal life Tyler has a chance to do so.
Tyler has a chance to regain some independence through a muscle transfer surgery by a specialist in Houston, Texas.
On July 14, 2007, Tyler and his family were traveling home from Lake Eufaula. The family’s car lost control after the boat it was hauling fish-tailed. The vehicle flipped at least several times.
Tyler wasn’t breathing when his father found him.
Tyler spent two weeks at Southeast Alabama Medical Center in Dothan, Ala. before he was transferred to Children’s Scottish Rite Hospital in Atlanta, Ga. He was in a coma for four months.
The family was told Tyler would be a vegetable due to the traumatic brain injury he sustained, however he slowly came out of the coma. Still, they were told Tyler would likely never walk or have a normal life.
He was like a backwards seat, his little body was so twisted.
The brain injury damaged the nerves that control his arms and legs and his left arm was left unusable. At 4 he had his first surgery – a tendon transfer operation which gave Tyler use of his left hand and feeling in the arm, but without the use of the arm.
There is hope that Tyler can regain use of his left arm with the muscle transfer surgery at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Texas. A specialist with the Texas Nerve and Paralysis Institute will perform the surgery.
Despite the January surgery there may be other surgeries necessary to repair Tyler’s right arm, which is bent at the elbow.
Botox injections are needed every 3 months to relax his tensed muscles just so he can walk.Therapy has been helpful to Tyler.
When Tyler begins to use the ARMTUTOR he will not only enjoy its use but will be able to make progress in using his affected limbs.
The ARMTUTOR system has been developed to allow for functional rehabilitation of the shoulder and elbow and wrist or upper extremity. The system consists of an ergonomic wearable arm brace and dedicated physical rehabilitation software. The ARMTUTOR system allows for interactive rehabilitation exercise and a range of biomechanical evaluations including speed, passive and active range of motion and motion analysis of the upper extremity. This quantitative data allows Physical and occupational therapists (OT) (PT) to customize the right exercise parameters to the patients movement ability and report on the patients exercise progress. The ARMTUTOR rehabilitation concept is based on performing controlled and repetitive exercise rehabilitation practice through the use of various games which are at a patient customized level with real time accurate feedback on the patient’s performance. The rehabilitation games are suitable for a wide variety of neurological and orthopedic injury and diseases.
The games challenge the patient to perform the exercise at a customized difficulty level. This level is set by the occupational or physical therapist and encourages the patient to do intensive repetitive exercise practice.
The ARMTUTOR allows for isolated and/or a combination of elbow and three directional shoulder treatments. The system provides detailed exercise performance instructions and precise feedback on the patients exercise performance. Overall. controlled exercise of multijoints within a normal movement pattern will prevent the patient developing an undesired and compensatory joint movement pattern and this will ensure better performance of functional tasks.
The Arm Tutor and its sister devices (LEGTUTOR, HANDTUTOR, 3DTUTOR) are used wordwide in hospitals and clinics. They can be used at home through telerehabilitation. See WWW.HANDTUTOR.COM for more information….
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