How the Tutor System Ensures Balance in Parkinson’s Patients

Fuzhong Li, Ph.D.at al conducted a study to see if Tai-Chi would be helpful in treating balance problems of Parkinson’s patients. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Feb. 9, 2012.
It’s known that patients with Parkinson’s disease have impaired balance which leads to diminished functional ability and can increase the risk of falling. Exercise is routinely encouraged by health care providers but few programs have been proven effective. The TUTOR system is one that has had many successes.
In the study, 195 patients were given Tai chi, resistance training, or stretching exercises. The patients participated in 60-minute exercise sessions twice weekly for 24 weeks.
The Tai chi group performed consistently better than the resistance-training and stretching groups The Tai chi group also performed better than the stretching group in all secondary outcomes and outperformed the resistance-training group in stride length and functional reach. Tai chi lowered the incidence of falls as compared with stretching but not as compared with resistance training. The effects of Tai chi training were maintained at 3 months after the intervention. No serious adverse events were observed.
The conclusions drawn were that Tai chi training appears to reduce balance impairments in patients with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s disease, with additional benefits of improved functional capacity and reduced falls. The TUTOR system in addition to Tai Chi training can also achieve improvement in therapy training for Parkinson’s patients.
The newly developed HANDTUTOR and its sister devices (ARMTUTOR, LEGTUTOR, 3DTUTOR) have become a key system in neuromuscular rehabilitation for stroke victims and those recovering from Parkinson’s, brain and spinal injuries, MS, CP and other limb movement limitations. These innovative devices implement an impairment based program with augmented motion feedback that encourages motor learning through intensive active exercises and movement practice.
The HANDTUTOR, ARMTUTOR, LEGTUTOR and 3DTUTOR consist of wearable glove and braces that detect limb movement showing the patient how much active or assisted active movement he is actually doing. The rehabilitation software uses special rehabilitation games to set a new target for this movement in terms of the patient’s ability to move his limb. The devices then measure the limb movement and give feedback on the success in trying to gain this new movement objective. In this way the patient is given movement feedback that allows him to understand which effort is more successful in moving his affected limb again. The TUTOR system provides exercises that are challenging and motivating and allow for repetitive and intensive exercise practice.
The HANDTUTOR, ARMTUTOR, LEGTUTOR, 3DTUTOR are now part of the rehabilitation program of leading U.S. German, Italian, French, UK and other foreign hospitals. See WWW.HANDTUTOR.COM for more information.