Help for Spinal Injuries

A man with a partial spinal cord injury has gained impressive walking ability with treadmill training plus an implanted device that stimulates his spinal cord, suggesting that the combined therapy might help such patients, researchers report.

About half of spinal cord injury patients have partial injury that allows some leg muscle movement but not useful walking. Prior studies have shown that with intensive training on a treadmill, however, some can learn to walk again.

The man in the new study--Ken Paulson, 44, of Phoenix--was significantly impaired even after treadmill training. But he showed much improvement after he started using the stimulator, researchers reported in the February issue of the journal Spinal Cord.

For example, after four months of treadmill therapy, Paulson usually needed nearly three minutes to cover 50 feet on the ground with a walker. By using the stimulator, he cut that to less than a minute. His own rating of the effort it took to walk dropped from 8 on a 10-point scale to 2.

After four months of training on the ground, he was able to walk about the length of three football fields, still using the walker.

The walker is mostly for stability and may be traded soon for a cane, said researcher Dr. Richard Herman of the Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Phoenix. Paulson, who sustained his spinal cord injury in a traffic accident, also uses a wheelchair for some tasks, Herman said. Perhaps a quarter to a third of patients with incomplete spinal cord injury could benefit from combining the stimulation with treadmill training, Herman estimated Thursday.

He and other experts cautioned that the study focused on only one patient and that more study would be needed to assess the usefulness of the combined therapy.