LegTutor Assists Stroke Patients With Balance and Telerehabilitation

A study was published in the journal “Disability Rehabilitation” on August 25,2011 about “Telerehabilitation Using Virtual Reality That Can Improve Balance in Stroke Patients. It was written by I. Cikajlo and M. Rudolf etal of the University Rehabilitation Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia. They state that the objective of telerehabilitation is a continuation of the rehabilitation process in the patients’ home.
The study also compares the balance training in a clinical environment with the telerehabilitation approach where the physiotherapists and physicians can follow the progress remotely., The telerehabilitation approach in VR supported balance training and improved balance in stroke patients. It had a similar effect on the patients’ postural functional improvement just as conventional balance training in clinical settings. However, when balance training is continued in the patient’s home instead of the hospital, it would eventually decrease the number of outpatient visits, reduce related costs and enable the treatment of a larger number of patients.
The TUTOR system has been created to achieve balance therapy for stroke patients. This works by placing a LEGTUTOR or 3DTUTOR on the less impaired leg and/or the more impaired leg. (The LEGTUTOR is an ergonomic wearable leg brace with dedicated rehabilitation software. The LEGTUTOR rehabilitation concept is based on performing controlled exercise rehabilitation practice at a patient customized level with real time accurate feedback on the patient’s performance. This means that the LEGTUTOR system allows the physical therapist to prescribe a leg rehabilitation program customized to the patient’s knee and hip movement ability at their stage of rehabilitation. The LEGTUTOR uses biofeedback to keep the patient motivated to do the practice session with the exercises designed in the form of challenging games. These games are suitable for a wide variety of other neurological and orthopedic injuries and diseases as well.)
Then the patient stands on one leg (either impaired or healthy/more healthy) and proceeds to play one of the TUTOR created games such as: ”darts”. This way they strengthen work on balance + cognition. Telerehabilitation allows the patient who has improved from the original event or is unable to come to the clinic to continue his therapy from home.
See WWW.HANDTUTOR.COM for more information.