An idea for rehabilitation of COVID-19 patients?

Use the Andago® to retrain walking

Changi General Hospital, Singapore recently published a very interesting case description of a lady using the Andago to retrain walking after pneumonia. Especially in times of COVID-19, we think this article can be really helpful for all clinicians out there.

The case described involves a 31-year-old patient with an arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare, non-progressive congenital disease leading to multiple joint contractures and muscle weakness. For this particular patient, the disease led to scoliosis and associated restrictive lung disease. Due to this pre-condition, when she was recently hospitalized with pneumonia, she needed ventilator support and ICU care. Following release to the general ward, the patient was unable to ambulate further than 3m, even with physical support and she had a dependency on oxygen.

And here is where the Andago came in. Referred to an inpatient rehabilitation program, the Andago permitted the patient to start walking training despite her conditions and by the 6th session, she was able to walk over 300m with only minimal body weight support. This improvement also transferred to her everyday life, as she is able to walk 80m with a walking stick and no longer depends on additional oxygen supply.

In this case, the Andago provided exactly the safe and permissive environment that was needed to allow overground gait training. It provided just enough support to permit the training, but only as much as needed, so that gains in walking ability transferred to walking outside of the device.

The authors of the case report conclude that gait training performed with the Andago facilitates pulmonary rehabilitation and recommended this knowledge can be generalized to other patients with similar conditions.