Stroke Victims ‘Play’ to Get Well

He doesn’t remember because he was too young at the time, but David Putrino suffered a severe neurological injury as a child. The entire left side of his body was affected.

Doctors told his parents he might never walk, might never use the left side of his body, might never be completely functional again. He was just 18 months old at the time.

Unwilling to accept the diagnosis, Putrino’s parents essentially forced him to do everything with the left side of his body, or he wasn’t allowed to do anything. If he wanted to play, eat, color — it had to be with his left arm.

While some might feel that was cruel punishment for a child with a disability, Putrino is now a fully functional adult with an extensive background in physical therapy. He also has a PhD in neurological recovery, and his career has been spent working toward optimizing the recovery of others who have also sustained a neurological injury.

He says what his parents did for him was perhaps the most important decision ever made in his life.

“Everything recovered,” Putrino told LifeZette.

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Believing there is more out there for those who have suffered a debilitating health condition or event, Putrino is now fueled by possibility. And, even moreso right now, by gaming.

Putrino, a researcher at the Burke Medical Research Institute in White Plains, New York, recently co-authored a small pilot study on gesture (ges) therapy, which uses video game software to aid in the recovery of stroke.

Stroke is the main cause of motor and cognitive disabilities requiring therapy in the world. Many right now are seeking out more effective rehabilitation technology that allows stroke victims movement therapy without the expense of an always-present therapist, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

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It was a small trial, only 14 people. But Putrino believes — with what their team saw through just one gaming program over six short weeks — that the technology could revolutionize both how stroke victims recover, and how much more they might recover from severe neurological and physical damage than what many do now.

“Right now, in terms of stroke rehab, there’s this terrible idea that once someone gets to six months post-stroke, there’s nothing more you can do to help them. A lot of rehab trials have tried to help, but the conclusion has always been, ‘Well, some people got better, some didn’t, and some got worse.’ With the exception of a couple of treatments that work in highly specific populations, it is very hard to get a consistent response from available stroke therapies.”

In the 2015 trial, chronic stroke patients came into the lab and essentially played a flying simulation game three times a week for a half hour each visit. While the trial was initially done only to look at the logistics of how researchers might do a larger study, the results showed significant improvements in the movement of chronic stroke survivors with impaired arm function.

“We’ve definitely seen significant decreases in impairment, although we were unable to run the study long enough to see if the decreases in impairment continued and resulted in improvement in function — actually making a difference in someone’s day to day life. But what I can tell you is that even in this limited clinical trial with low-intensity therapy, the people who engaged in it saw some significant improvements.”

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One of the trial’s stars, said Putrino, went from being unable to open his hand to being able to open and close this hand because of the game. This man begged the team to be able to continue on with therapy after they were done.

The reason gaming might work better than conventional stroke therapies?

“There was an extremely strong correlation between an individual who enjoyed the therapy and the outcome,” said Putrino.

“It starts to explain a lot about this chronic stroke population. It starts to really make us understand that therapy needs to be a lot more personalized than what we’re making it. To get really strong rehab gains, people need to be highly engaged and excited about what they’re doing and enjoy their therapy.”

With technology costs coming down significantly, researchers believe these kinds of therapies, once further studied, will ultimately be widely available. That is exciting for those who, like Putrino, believe ges therapy will make an incredible difference for stroke patients, especially when combined with traditional stroke therapies.

The effect of the technology is also being studied in other areas, like cerebral palsy.

Putrino’s team is in the process of seeking funding from the National Institutes of Health for a larger study on the technology. They are also working to crowdfund ongoing research in order to maintain the momentum.