First Advanced Parkinson’s Patient to Walk Again with New Spinal Implant, ‘It’s Incredible’
A Frenchman who received a new spinal implant has regained significant motor functions including the ability to walk unaided for miles after losing all such faculties to advanced-stage Parkinson’s Disease.
In the latter stages of the moto-neuron disorder, patients lose the ability to correctly use their muscles, and at some points movement can shut off entirely and they can crumple to the floor.
63-year-old Marc from Bordeaux, France was diagnosed with the condition 20 years ago, and it got so bad that there had to be someone holding his arms at all times in case his walking gait just froze.
He was the subject of the experimental spinal implant technology developed through a collaboration between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and the Lausanne University Hospital that has also restored some mobility to a man with a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed.
When you see images of people with spinal cord injuries walking again with the help of implants, there’s normally a computer attached to their back, or they’re in a laboratory setting.
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