Assessment of the upper limb is critical to guiding the rehabilitation cycle. Drawbacks of observation-based assessment include subjectivity and coarse resolution of ordinal scales. Kinematic assessment gives rise to objective quantitative metrics, but uptake is encumbered by costly and impractical setups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmersion experiences for undergraduate students in biomedical engineering are key contributors to their ability to identify medical needs. Despite this, as few as 25% of surveyed programs report providing such opportunities. Since 2010 when the National Institute of Health began its R25 grant mechanism to support curricular development toward team-based design, several institutions have established programs for immersion experiences, which provide precedent for their implementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rise of 3D printing allows unprecedented customization of rehabilitation devices, and with an ever-expanding library of 3D printable (3DP) materials, the spectrum of attenable rehabilitation devices is likewise expanding. The current pilot study explores feasibility of using 3DP elastic materials to create dynamic hand orthoses for stroke survivors. A dynamic orthosis featuring a replaceable finger component was fabricated using 3DP elastic materials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Stroke remains a major public health concern in the United States and a leading cause of long-term disability in adults. Dynamic body weight support (DBWS) systems are popular technology available for use in clinical settings such inpatient rehabilitation. However, there remains limited studies in such inpatient settings that compare DBWS to standard of care (SOC) using real world outcome measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Dynamic body-weight support (DBWS) may play an important role in rehabilitation outcomes, but the potential benefit among disease-specific populations is unclear. In this study, we hypothesize that overground therapy with DBWS during inpatient rehabilitation yields greater functional improvement than standard-of-care in adults with non-traumatic spinal cord injury (NT-SCI).
Methods: This retrospective cohort study included individuals diagnosed with NT-SCI and undergoing inpatient rehabilitation.