LONDON - after Rob Summers was paralyzed below the chest in a car accident in 2006, his doctors he would never support once again. They were wrong to do so.
Despite intensive physical therapy for three years, summers condition had not improved. Therefore, in 2009, doctors implanted an electrical Stimulator on the lining of his spinal cord to try to awaken his damaged nervous system. Within days, summers, 25, was without assistance. Months later, he disturbed his toes, moved his knees, ankles and hips and was able to take a few steps on a treadmill.
"It was the most incredible feeling," said summers, Portland, Oregon. "After not being able to move four years ago, I thought finally things could change."
Yet, despite his renewed optimism, summers can be maintained when it is not in a session with the lit pacemaker therapy, and it normally rolled in a wheelchair. Doctors are currently limiting its use of the device, made by Minneapolis Medtronic, Inc., based in several hours at a time.
His case is described in an article published Friday in the journal Lancet. The research was paid by the National Institutes of Health of United States and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
For years, some people with incomplete spinal cord injuries, who have control of their members, experienced improvements after experiments in electrically stimulating muscles. But progress had not been seen before in someone with a complete spinal cord.
"This is not a cure, but it could lead to a feature enhanced in some patients," said Gregoire Courtine, head of the experimental Neurorehabilitation at the University of Zurich. It was not bound by summers. Warned courtine summers recovery has not made a difference in the daily life of the patient and that needed more research to help paralyzed people regain enough mobility to make a difference in their normal routine.
Electrical Stimulator surgeons implanted spinal cord summers is usually used to relieve pain and can cost up to $20,000. Doctors implanted summers lower than normal, on the basis of its vertebrae.
"The pacemaker sends a general signal to the spinal cord to walk or stand," said Dr Susan Harkema, Director of research of rehabilitation in the Centre of research of injuries of the spinal cord Kentucky at Louisville and main author of the Lancet study.
Harkema and colleagues were surprised Summers was able to voluntarily move his legs. "That tells us that we can access the channels of the nervous system, which opens up a whole new avenue for us to paralysis of the address," said Harkema. She said prescribing drugs could also speed up recovery.
Dr. John McDonald, Director of the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, said that the strategy could be quickly adopted for 10-15% of paralyzed patients who could benefit. It was not bound to the summers case.
"There is no doubt that we will do this to our patients", he said. McDonald added that, since electrical stimulators are already approved for pain relief, it should not be difficult to also study to help some patients to resume movement.
For the moment, summers is approximately two hours per day of physiotherapy.
"My ultimate goal is to walk and run again," he said. "I think that anything is possible and that I will have my wheelchair one day."
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