Julia Crawford has walked with a cane since recovering from a stroke in June, and although she can get around, she worries about falling.
Now Crawford's getting some of her balance back with a new machine at Spain Rehabilitation Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"I think it's great. I really do," said Crawford, who, after three sessions on the new machine, says her balance is better. "The first time I got on it, I said, 'I don't ever want to get on that thing again.' But then I got used to it."
The Neurocom balance machine does look like an amusement park ride -- on a recent visit, the 70-year-old Crawford was strapped into a harness and helped onto a metal plate that shimmies and shakes -- but the professionals who work with it say it does serious business.
The machine gives the physical therapists at Spain a new way to test and improve balance. And that could affect a wide range of people, from stroke victims to people recovering from fractured limbs and beyond.
"The incidence of balance disorders is pretty large in the general population," said Cathy Newhouse, the rehabilitation administrator at Spain. "As you age you lose balance, and that can result in a fall, and anytime you have a fall you have a risk of significant injury."
She said as many as half of all people older than 65 have thinning, brittle bones. Even a simple stumble can result in a broken wrist or hip, which can severely limit mobility and lead to more health problems.
One in three seniors fall each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and falls may kill as many as 18,000 elderly people annually and result in 2 million additional emergency room visits a year for older people.
Newhouse said falls generally can be linked to problems in any of three areas. There's the somatosensory system, the way your muscles and bones respond to input from the outside world, like a bump in the sidewalk. Then there's the visual system, meaning the eyes aren't able to adjust quickly enough to a change in the environment. (Imagine the disorientation you might feel if, while you wait at a stoplight, the car next to you moves suddenly.) Third comes the vestibular system, or inner ear, which often malfunctions and causes unexplained dizziness.
And while physical therapists have long had exercises to evaluate and improve patients' balance -- the wobble board has become a fixture at gyms as well as in therapists' offices -- they've not been able to determine just which part of the body is causing the problem.
That's why Spain launched a fundraising campaign to help purchase the Neurocom machine, which costs around $100,000. There is another one at UAB, but it's used mostly for experiments and not general patients. Newhouse said she knows of only one other in Alabama, and it's not in the Birmingham area.
With the Neurocom, therapists like Brian King, who's working with Crawford, can run a series of diagnostic reports to determine the root cause of balance issues. In one, the brightly colored background of the machine will suddenly tilt to test the patient's visual acuity. In another, the platform below will tip forward, then back, to see if a person can right him or herself without falling. The data is then crunched by a computer, which can also measure improvement during therapy.
A visit to Spain Rehabilitation Center and time on the Neurocom balance machine requires a physician's referral, but there will be an open house for the public with demonstrations Sept. 30 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
"We love it. Everybody, all of our therapists that have used it, have really enjoyed using it because it just quantifies everything for us," said King.
King said he's worked with patients with head injuries, strokes and Parkinson's disease and even one who had lost both legs above the knee and was learning to balance on artificial limbs.
Newhouse said it's also applicable for multiple sclerosis and people recovering from injured ankles or knees, and could be used in the future to help injured workers determine whether they can go back on the job.
"I think there's things that we haven't even figured out yet," King said.
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