The ElbowTutor™ evaluates and treats extension/ flexion of the elbow and supination/ pronation of the forearm. The ElbowTutor™ allows for the implementation of an active exercise based elbow and forearm rehabilitation program that uses the accepted methods of impairment orientated training (IOT) with augmented feedback. The system is based on a safe comfortable brace with position and speed sensors together with the dedicated rehabilitation software package. There are four brace sizes for both left and right sides. The ElbowTutor™ can be used alone or in combination with the HandTutor™ to give occupational and physical therapists access to an affordable user friendly arm rehabilitation package program that uses the proven concept of biofeedback.
Indications for arm rehabilitation with the ElbowTutor™ include:
- Post Ischemic or Hemorrhagic stroke
- Arm dexterity improvement following head injuries
- Arm Strengthening for patients suffering from Multiple Sclerosis
- Adult and Child Cerebral Palsy including spastic, ataxic and athetoid mixed cerebral palsy
- Arm surgery rehabilitation following Tendon transfer or Open Reduction Internal Fixation (ORIF)
- Rehabilitation of forearm injuries
- Elbow, Radius, Ulnar fractures and soft tissue and other forearm injuries
- Brachial Plexus nerve injury
- Radial and Ulnar nerve injuries
- Arm Impairments characterized by limited active range of arm due to muscle weakness and muscle flaccidity
- Arm muscle weakness
- Arm pain management and pain rehabilitation due to Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
ElbowTutor™
With the ElbowTutor™ Meditouch™ has developed a system that builds on the proven rehabilitation concept that uses active repetitive exercises together with biofeedback. This allows the occupational or physical therapist to give treatment based on challenging exercises tailored to the patient's forearm impairment such as range of motion, accuracy and speed of movement. Arm rehabilitation treatments using the ElbowTutor™ alone or in combination with the HandTutor™ should be combined with traditional arm therapy for optimum results.
The rehabilitation program allows the clinician to firstly evaluate the patient's arm impairment. This information is saved and documented so that a continuous report of patient progress is always available. Reports can be saved to the patients file and be passed on to other rehabilitation specialists to ensure that the patient's treatment schedule is optimized thus ensuring better treatment outcome.
The clinician can then choose and customize the game and its level of difficulty to patient's specific impairment. For example the game "Save the Earth" game can be chosen to work on speed of arm movement. The level of game difficulty can be adjusted either by the clinician or automatically controlled by the computer as the patients exercise performance leads to an improvement in their range of motion.
During the exercise task the MediTutor™ rehabilitation software provides motion, visual and auditory biofeedback. The augmented feedback is provided in the form of quantitative/ qualitative, terminal and concurrent feedback. This augmented feedback teaches the patient to understand, plan and direct their arm movements to perform the required exercise. The package has been designed to ensure that the patient remains challenged and motivated. All the exercises can be performed at different difficulty levels that can be customized to the patient's degree of elbow impairment and arm movement ability. This means that the patient is always able to interact with the games. In addition the level of exercise difficulty can be adjusted either by the clinician or automatically by the software. The patient's motivation to improve on their elbow exercise performance is further increased as an overall performance score is included in the sophisticated program. Overall the rehabilitation program ensures that the patient achieves controlled muscle reinforcement as the clinician can choose and tailor the appropriate exercise to the patient.
The ElbowTutor™ system incorporates patient record software that allows quantitative reports of the patient's rehabilitation to be saved and used later in treatment reports and patient follow up. This allows the clinician to evaluate and justify the rehabilitation process and further tailor the rehabilitation process to the patient's arm impairment. In addition the occupation and physical therapist can use the ElbowTutor™ to work on several motor impairments simultaneously.
The system is sold into specialized hospital and primary care hand clinics where it allows the clinician to offer simultaneous multiple patient treatments for a broad range of arm rehabilitation indications. The system is also used by general occupational and physiotherapy clinics that offer their patients a high tech treatment option for elbow rehabilitation. A home use and Home Care version is also available allowing the patient to further achieve accelerated rehabilitation by continuing their treatment sessions at home. Rehabilitation is therefore not limited to the hospital and primary care clinic and sessions can take place whenever the patient is motivated and available to train ensuring greater patient treatment acceptance and compliance and further improving their exercise performance.
This innovative high tech new technology allows for faster and better rehabilitation results enhancing patient quality of life.
