Date: Monday, March 20, 2023
Category: General Session
With advancing technology, the use of overground robotic exoskeletons (ORE) is becoming more prevalent to address mobility deficits in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). Our previous work has shown that integrating ORE into clinical practice is 1) safe and feasible in the inpatient rehabilitation setting, 2) progressively tolerated, and 3) able to be initiated during inpatient rehabilitation and continue with outpatient therapy. Reported benefits of an ORE intervention include improved mobility, emotional well-being, and bowel and bladder function, and reduced pain and spasticity. This session will highlight the safety, feasibility, tolerability, and benefits of ORE training, share perceptions of persons with lived experience, and suggest future research directions to optimize the use of ORE for persons with SCI across different phases of recovery.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will identify common barriers to implementation of ORE use in inpatient rehabilitation.
- Participants will be able to describe adjustments to device settings that can be made to progress ORE training.
- Participants will identify health benefits persons with SCI may experience after using ORE during rehabilitation.