When Hayley Trotman walked out of Askham Rehab into her husband’s arms, having been able to move only a couple of her fingers four months earlier after being struck by Guillem-Barre Syndrome (GBS), her recovery marked a huge achievement.
As well as the remarkable progress made by Hayley, who had exceeded all expectations for her progress in that timeframe, her journey also showed what can be possible with specialist rehabilitation, even during the COVID-19 pandemic and its stringent restrictions. While for many patients around the UK and indeed the world, their rehabilitation was paused or delayed, at Askham, if anything, the team’s work with their residents intensified, ensuring that even during some of the most challenging conditions healthcare has ever faced, their recovery was allowed to continue.
A new VR platform for brain injury rehabilitation has been created by a team of medical professionals, whose commitment to the use of technology in rehab is helping to advance thinking in the area nationally.
Brain Recovery Zone provides the resources for brain injury survivors to support their own recovery from an early stage, and increase their capability to manage fatigue, improve speech and mood and stabilise their emotions from their own home. The platform offers a safe virtual space for people to practice the habits that aid recovery in an immersive environment, of which there are 11 to choose from, ranging from the Northern Lights to the Hundred Acre Wood of Winnie the Pooh fame. Mindfulness and meditation experiences are also offered.
A pioneering gene therapy programme which could pave the way for novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases has been launched.
The research has been awarded £513,141 from LifeArc and the Motor Neurone Disease Association to test the feasibility and efficiency of an ambitious gene therapy programme to treat motor neurone disease (MND) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients with underlying mutations in a causative gene known as C9orf72.
If successful, this programme could lead groundbreaking research into future clinical trials for one of the most common forms of these incurable neurodegenerative diseases within the next few years.
The research, at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, is led by Dr Guillaume Hautbergue, head of the RNA Biology Laboratory, in collaboration with Professor Mimoun Azzouz and Professor Dame Pamela Shaw.
In a groundbreaking move for the care sector, Exemplar Health Care has designed training for its team around sexuality, intimacy and friendships in care homes. NR Times learns more about the industry-leading initiative and the benefits it will deliver to residents
“We are all sexual beings – we all want to be loved and we all crave intimacy at times. And that shouldn’t be any different for people who live in care homes.”
Such a powerful statement typifies Exemplar Health Care’s bold attitude to tackling head-on what has long been widely considered a ‘taboo’ subject.
The issue of sex and sexuality in care homes is something that is rarely discussed, even within care home settings, but determined to make a difference to this and bring greater empowerment to their residents, Exemplar Health Care decided to lead the change.
Rehabilitation robotics unicorn Fourier Intelligence is set to take its ongoing global expansion to the next level after securing funding from Saudi Aramco, becoming the first rehab tech company in the world to gain financial backing from a major player in the international investment market.
Fourier is now targeting global market expansion - with the United States and EU being key targets for the near future - ongoing development of its world-leading technology, and adding further to its international team through the C+ financing round, which the company’s co-founder Zen Koh described as being of “humongous” significance.
The business, a pioneer in the global rehab tech market, is already on an unrelenting path of growth, expanding into 54 countries to date from its native Singapore, including the UK, with more than 1,000 uses of its technology in 30 of them.
English football will introduce heading guidance across every level of the professional and amateur game from the start of the 2021-22 season, it was announced today.
The new guidance, which is specifically focused on training sessions where the majority of heading occurs, has been designed to meet the requirements of each level of English football. The guidance will apply to clubs in the Premier League, EFL, Barclays Women’s Super League, FA Women’s Championship, the National League System, the Women’s Football Pyramid Tiers 3 and below, all grassroots football, and across the England national teams.
The new heading guidance has been agreed between the FA, Premier League, EFL, the PFA and the LMA.
Research is underway to better understand the impact of Long COVID and the cognitive impairment associated with the condition.
The CICERO (Cognitive Impairment in long Covid: PhEnotyping and RehabilitatiOn) project will help to determine which elements of brain function are most affected in people with Long COVID, using MRI scanning to identify affected brain networks.
UCL researchers will then develop and test a new rehabilitation strategy to help people recover from the cognitive aspects of Long COVID and return to normal life and working ability. This will support production of a freely available COVID-19 Cognitive Recovery Guide on how best to offer the new rehabilitation approach depending on the patient’s symptoms.
It has been backed by £1.2 million from NIHR.
Researchers have created a traumatic brain injury (TBI) computer model that maps blood vessels in a rat brain in the highest resolution yet.
The team at Imperial College London say the models could help improve understanding of how blood vessels are affected by TBI, as well as its effects on the protective layer encasing them known as the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which protects the brain from harmful circulating molecules and pathogens.
If the methods translate well onto human brains, Imperial say they could also help improve understanding of how TBIs develop and how best to treat and protect against them.
The simulations could even help to replace animal models of TBI, potentially reducing the use of animals in brain research.
TBIs are the most common cause of chronic disability in under 40-year-olds and result from severe blows or jolts to the head.
A vocational rehabilitation programme in the North East aimed at getting those living with a brain injury back into working life has been resurrected by a community charity.
Headway Tyneside worked closely with the NHS and fellow charities, Headway County Durham and Headway Darlington & District, to ensure the programme could continue following last year’s closure of Newcastle-based providers, Momentum Skills.
‘Headway to Work’ is the newly-branded service which will support around 14 people per year living in Durham and Darlington. Each participant will be individually assessed by therapists to gain an understanding of their difficulties, enabling the team to offer personalised support throughout the programme.
Hailed as the future of cancer diagnostics, Dxcover is set to revolutionise healthcare by pioneering a new test to diagnose cancer more quickly, simply and cost-effectively than ever before. CEO Dr Mark Hegarty and chief technology officer Dr Matthew J Baker discuss their pioneering work to date in brain cancer detection
Through the AI-led analysis of a single drop of blood, it is possible to detect brain cancer.
Having been verified through two groundbreaking clinical studies, the Dxcover Brain Cancer liquid biopsy, the first of its kind in the world, is now set to go into pivotal trials with a view to commercialisation in 2024 - paving the way to save lives and improve quality of life globally through the earlier diagnosis of cancer. With the creation of the Dxcover Platform - which combines novel hardware with artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse a patient's blood - and its patented Drop Dry Detect method of detecting cancer, a process which currently may take eight weeks or more to fully diagnose can be fast-tracked into a matter of minutes.
