Devices Let the Disabled See World Eye to Eye : Wheelchairs: Equipment that unfolds to allow the user to stand may offer medical benefits as well as boost self-esteem.

Three months after she got out of therapy for a broken back at Newington Children’s Hospital here, Sheri Martin returned to work at Windsor Federal Savings and Loan.

Martin was paralyzed from the chest down after a snowmobile crash in January, 1989. Before the accident, she was a teller at the bank. When she returned to work in August, she rolled her wheelchair behind a desk to work as a customer-service representative.

“The bank set up the desks differently for me, and they already had a handicapped bathroom,” Martin, 22, said.

She worked at the desk for nearly a year, but now she wants to train tellers at the new computer terminals the bank has set up “behind the line,” where tellers wait on customers.

The terminals are at eye-level--eye-level for tellers who stand up. So Martin has to stand up, too.

That is what brought her to Seamus Donnellan, owner of A&L; Mobility in Windsor, Conn., and distributor of wheelchairs that unfold to allow the user to stand. After seeing a demonstration of different standing devices at the hospital, she decided to buy Donnellan’s product.

Like Transformers--those children’s toys that convert from a car or plane to a robot--the wheelchairs lose their traditional look with a tug on two spring-loaded bars.

Martin first folds the padded chair arms around her chest. Then she reaches back to grasp the two bars near the back of the chair’s wheels, and tugs gently.

The metal frame begins to move and change shape. Martin’s tug is aided by a gas-filled spring that resembles a miniature shock absorber. The spring helps her push. The back of the wheelchair rises, with the seat sliding up so her lower back rests against it.

The small front wheels lift off the ground, and an L-shaped stand replaces them. The large back wheels are braked to keep Martin firmly in place.

She is not quite erect: She leans at a 75-degree angle, her arms resting on what used to be the chair arms, her knees getting an extra lift from padded braces. But a lot of her support comes the old-fashioned way: from her feet.

“It’s not gimmickry at all,” said Cindi Jones, publisher of Mainstream, a San Diego-based magazine for consumers with disabilities. “It has medical benefits, and there are self-esteem issues.”

Phyllis Zlotnick of West Hartford, an advocate for the disabled, agreed: “For multiple sclerosis and certain spinal-cord injuries, it has validity.”

For someone paralyzed by a spine injury, standing can improve blood circulation, lessen muscle spasms and contractions, and prevent calcium loss in bones, or osteoporosis, which makes the bones brittle. (“I couldn’t do this with someone who had been paralyzed for 20 years. His leg bones would snap,” Donnellan said.)

It also helps reduce the risk of pressure sores, once known as bed sores, which extended sitting can produce on the behind; reduce bladder infections; and reduce the occurrence of kidney stones.

As for those self-esteem issues, “If you stand up, you can look someone in the eye,” Jones said.

Donnellan’s Lifestand, invented in France, is one of several brands in what Jones calls “a growth industry” among the 2 million to 3 million wheelchair users in the United States. There’s also Levo U.S.A., IMEX Healthcare Inc. and the all-electric HiRider, a $12,000 to $16,000 device that can roll you down the street in a standing position.

Lifestand chairs cost $4,800 to $4,900, depending on the model and size, Donnellan said, compared with $1,000 to $2,500 for a “standard” wheelchair.

Jones warned: “Disabled consumers tend to be at the mercy of their durable medical equipment dealer.” Her magazine tries to give consumers an idea of the alternatives, she said, and has published articles comparing stand-up frames and wheelchairs.

The standing wheelchairs must be prescribed by a doctor; they should not be used if there are any cardiac or orthopedic problems or bone brittleness. Donnellan said that 75% to 80% of the chairs are bought through health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and workers’ compensation.

Devices for standing are not new: Stationary “standing frames,” available for years for residential or office use, have allowed disabled people to lift themselves to their feet. Such frames resemble tall tables with straps or other supports to hold a user up.

Although Dr. Philip Arnold, director of the Department of Rehabilitative Medicine at Newington Children’s Hospital, prescribed the chair for Martin, he is wary of the newer devices.

“They’re a lot more expensive and a lot more mechanically complicated than a simple standing frame,” Arnold said. “They are usually prescribed when they can help in terms of business or the workplace.”

They are heavier and more awkward and harder to get in and out of a car than a lightweight chair, he said.

Asked about physiological benefits, he said, “There is no benefit they have for circulation, osteoporosis or anything else that cannot be accomplished with a lightweight wheelchair accompanied by a simple standing frame.”

He said standing frames cost one-tenth the cost of a standing wheelchair.