SCI Participant Statements

Hand Grasp and Release for C5/C6 Tetraplegia

Annette never realized that she would someday be in a similar situation of people she helped as an assistant dog trainer until her car accident in August 2002. The result of that car accident was an incomplete spinal cord injury affecting both her upper and lower extremities, a condition called quadriplegia.

After the accident, she was unable to live her life as she wanted. She could not work, participate in sports, volunteer or travel: All the things that brought enrichment to her life. While searching for a way to help Annette, a friend stumbled onto the Cleveland FES (Functional Electrical Stimulation) Center. Located in University Circle, the Cleveland FES Center is a research consortium made up of the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center, and Case Western Reserve University. For the past three decades Ph.D. engineers, scientists and an array of physicians have been focused on designing technology to return function lost due to spinal cord injury or stroke.

As Annette learned more about the options of FES, she decided that the best way to push the technology envelope was to become a research participant herself. So she sought out Dr. Kevin Kilgore and Anne Bryden, OTR/L, two of the lead researchers on the upper extremity FES project for evaluation. Building on the successes of past designs, the FES team has advanced their technology to include seamless or fully implant control of the hand/arm neuroprosthesis, as well as the ability to more closely simulate natural hand movements. In Annette’s case, providing a cross-stitching hand grasp was a goal that the research team could realize. Now, after a surgical procedure, which placed the system into her arm and hand, Annette is back at MetroHealth trying out her completely implanted FES system for the first time. She is handling everyday objects like a pen, toothbrush, hairbrush and fork – the necessary tools of independence. As she attempts to pick up a pen, she uses muscles in her neck and wrist to myoelectrically control the FES system in her left arm. Low voltage electricity travels from the internal power source to electrodes implanted into the muscles of her arm. In just the right sequence, these once unusable muscles contract and restore independence to Annette, and she can enjoy her cross-stitching once more. Why allow yourself to be a research test subject? Annette says, “ the prospect of returning to work and being more independent is worth the risk … besides, I am helping to make this technology ready and available for others. This is my advocacy.”

Led by Dr. Hunter Peckham, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case and the executive director of the Cleveland FES Center, functional gains, like Annette’s, are becoming mainstream. The research programs of the Cleveland FES Center include upper and lower limb movement, bladder & bowel function, deep brain stimulation and cortical control, pain and spasticity control, and many other clinical applications for spinal cord injury and stroke rehabilitation.