A healing harness — Your Health 2-13-09

New rehab treatment for patients in Long Beach

By Yaffi Spodek

Issue of Feb. 13, 2009 / 19 Shevat 5769

Teresa Collin, a former sergeant in the NYPD, has not been able to walk for nine years. She recently took her first steps using a ceiling-based rehabilitation harness, a new treatment to help recovering patients at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.

Teresa’s remarkable progress is matched by fellow patient Charles Loesch, a bilateral amputee who is now walking with a walker, after just six weeks of using the innovative 55-foot long rail harness. The harness is part of Grandell’s new Rehabilitation Stroke and Amputee Center which opened last month at its facility in Long Beach, the first New York State skilled nursing care center to have this equipment in-house.

“The harness will allow a faster approach for patients to regain independent physical movement and walking control,” explained Jake Weintraub, the administrator of Grandell. “This system promotes an aggressive gait and balance training program as well as a safer rehabilitation process for patients and therapists.”

The harness includes a mobile trolley and a lightweight height adjustment system, making it suitable for patients of different sizes. Since many amputees harbor a fear of falling during the rehabilitation treatment, the new system is effective in reassuring patients that they are fully supported by a vest attached to the harness and therefore cannot fall down.

“Their confidence increases a lot,” Weintraub said. “The harness produces quick results, after just six to eight weeks, depending on the patient, while other more traditional rehab treatments can take longer. The harness gives patients the confidence to start walking because it alleviates any anxiety they have about falling.”

Weintraub explained that the new unit was built with the expertise of numerous prosthetics manufacturers and nursing care organizations. Though there are similar systems in existence where patients are held up on a treadmill, Grandell chose the rail model because it allows for more direct movement and rapid changes in direction.

“Research shows that the intensity of this therapy is critical for optimizing improvement and patient independence,” Weintraub added.

He got the idea to create the harness system from Dennis Oehler and Todd Schaffhauser, two amputees who competed as runners in the Paralympics in Seoul, South Korea.

“They told me what was needed to get people back on their feet,” Weintraub recounted. “Though we are using it for amputees right now, other people can benefit from it as well, who are recovering from joint replacements and strokes... The idea is that the patients will have hopes of returning to normal activities of daily living.”