And wearable and robotic exoskeleton tailored for children with neuromotor problems, able to make them walk even outdoors. It is ‘Atlas’, developed from the research of the Irccs San Raffaele in Rome and the first of its kind in Italy. The presentation today with the Minister of Health Schillaci, the president of the Lazio Region Nicola Zingaretti and the councilor for health Alessio D’Amato. The name derives from atlas (C1), the first cervical vertebra of the spinal column, and Atlas is the new ‘superhero’ of the pediatric ward of San Raffaele.
“This is a great day for rehabilitation medicine – comments Enrico Garaci, president of the Scientific Committee of Irccs San Raffaele in the presentation to the minister of the exoskeleton – Atlas is like the titan who carries the world on his shoulders and will help children improve muscle tone, to stimulate synaptic plasticity, we know how important the exploration phase is as a child. The IRCCS – he continues – is the original model that Italy has, a unique model that has the task of translating the products of knowledge into treatments and therapies. In a vision of future healthcare, the IRCCS must occupy an important position “.
“Neurorehabilitation – explained Marco Franceschini, director of the Clinical Research Laboratory in Neuromotor Rehabilitation of the Roman IRCCS – is the tool that allows the reprogramming of brain functions through the mechanism of synaptic plasticity. In children with neurological diseases, many of which have never had the opportunity to walk, this mechanism takes on an even more important role: in this case, the little ones do not have to relearn but learn from scratch. Allowing them to walk in a physiological way with repeatability and intensity is a therapeutic opportunity to crucial”.
Atlas 2030, distributed in Italy by Emac Tecnologia Vitale, is the first wearable and usable exoskeleton in pediatric age for the rehabilitation of the walk of children between 4 and 10 years of age, with these pathologies: infantile cerebral palsy, myelolesions (lesions of the spinal cord spinal up to the C4 vertebra), muscular atrophy, muscular dystrophy, myopathies and various neuromuscular diseases.
“The robot uses active joints with variable stiffness that by biomimicry imitate the processes of natural muscle function, ensuring the safe control of movement in children with neuromotor disorders – explained Francesco Infarinato, head of the rehabilitation Bioengineering laboratory – its uniqueness in fact resides in the elastic technology that adapts to the user’s body, is equipped with 8 motors (two on the hip, one at the knee and one at the ankle on each leg) to ensure freedom of movement in all directions (‘overground’ system ) and is used in association with a support system that guarantees the safety of the child to whom it gives the possibility to walk in an active, repeatable and controlled way, allowing, at the same time, to interact with the environment in a free and safe way. system – he added – at the same time allows the therapist to interact face to face instead of supporting the movement from the spa lle of the child “.
“The success of the exoskeleton in adults – underlined Claudia Condoluci, head of the pediatric and developmental disabilities area of the Irccs San Raffaele in Rome – has led us to evaluate the possibility of its use also in rehabilitation pediatric. Most of the kids who are already using it in our ward have never walked independently. With ‘Atlas’ they can do it and can also perform various activities such as kicking a ball and drawing, things they never thought were possible Therefore, in addition to learning and acquiring adequate motor control strategies, maintaining an adequate joint range, controlling spasticity and strength, improving trunk stability and ventilatory and cardiovascular capacity, the robot has a very important impact on the cognitive, emotional and social sphere for the child and the family “.
“Given this and given the experience and outcomes of rehabilitation of walking with exoskeletons in adults and the scarcity of existing literature regarding pediatric intervention, we decided to propose a single-center, drug-free, interventional pilot study. , randomized controlled “, concludes Condoluci.
‘RoboKId’, this is the name of the research project, “will evaluate the feasibility, the intervention and the impact of this rehabilitation approach on the quality of life and the functional clinical status of the small participants who will be a total of 20 through an intervention program which will integrate active robotic gait treatment and traditional therapy “, concludes San Raffaele.