New mechanical device aids children with CP in efforts to walk

From the San Antonio Express-News in Texas:

Like any mother encouraging a child to take his first steps, Buffie Guanajuato coaxes her son Jordan toward her with a baby bottle and loving words. (Both are pictured.)

“Come on, let's go,” she calls out. “Where's Mama's baby?”

Jordan's not a toddler — he's 6 years old. But cerebral palsy, a disorder that warps the signals between the brain and the muscles, has kept him from walking. Instead, his brain often encourages him to curl up in a ball.

Today, a mechanical aid is helping Jordan move on his own two feet. It's a variation of a traditional baby walker, but with much more sophisticated engineering. A harness and leg braces are attached in back to a kind of hoist that can lift Jordan from a bicycle-type seat to a near-standing position for walking. As he takes a few cautious steps, the contraption rolls along with him, turning gently with cables and pulleys.

“Everybody has put limitations on Jordan that he's never going to do this or that,” said Guanajuato, who drove from Del Rio so Jordan could be fitted with the device, which was custom-built to his shape and size by Sky Medical, a Florida company. “This will help him do that and be independently mobile a little.

“I can't believe,” she adds, tears welling, “he made it all the way down the hallway.”

Children from six area families are being fitted with the devices this week at MK Prosthetic and Orthotic Services, which began offering the equipment. “A lot of these kids can't ambulate by themselves,” Mark Kirchner, head of MK Prosthetic, said. “They're relying on parents, caregivers, therapists. The only type of ambulation they get is if someone is holding them.

“We use orthotics to help brace their joints and keep them in good positioning. They can be free-suspending in this all by themselves, and with the way it moves — by them flexing one muscle or another — it will propel them forward. They can be independent on their own without Mom and Dad.”

This isn't the only device of its kind, but it's unusual in its features — it can grow with the child — and its portability. The whole thing folds up and squeezes into a car.

Kirchner said he was impressed by videos of families walking in shopping malls together, including children with cerebral palsy. And the device has no fancy electronics, just clever engineering, he added.

“Your body functions better when it's upright,” Kirchner said. “We notice, too, that you get a different reaction out of a lot of these kids. When you can get them up at your level, their attitudes change from always being in a chair and people looking down on them.”

“Most doctors, they kind of write off children like him: ‘Oh, well, they're going to be a certain way forever,'” Jordan's mother said. “Him trying to walk is a big, big step.”