CyberOko, a system that allows people who cannot speak or move to communicate by tracking eye movement, supports the diagnosis and rehabilitation of patients at the Neurological Rehabilitation Unit of the University Clinical Centre in Katowice.
- This device will extend the rehabilitation module for patients with limited traditional contact function, without the ability to communicate by speech, said the head of the Neurological Rehabilitation Unit of the Prof. K. Gibiński University Clinical Centre of the Silesian Medical University in Katowice on Wednesday Sylwia Szostek - Rogula.
- With the CyberOk, we can assess the extent of a patient's cognitive damage and then offer them rehabilitation using this equipment, she added.
Patients after strokes, accidents, brain tumours
As the doctor explains, CyberOko can serve patients after severe craniocerebral trauma, strokes, even in the most severe states of minimal consciousness, as well as those using a tracheostomy tube and patients with severe motor aphasia, which is that they understand speech but are unable to articulate sounds. - Very often patients without any possibility of verbal and gestural contact are assessed very poorly, and in fact they have consciousness, we just have to give them the possibility to express, a channel of access to them, often it is just sight, added Sylwia Szostek-Rogula.
Technology from Gdansk
The equipment has just been loaned to the Katowice hospital by AssisTech, a spin-off from the Gdansk University of Technology. - The inspiration for the creation of the C-Eye there was a grassroots need for families and centres interested in using such equipment in the diagnosis and rehabilitation of post-coma people, who were not known to be in contact and to what extent they understood what was going on around them," recalled AssisTech CEO Dr Eng. Bartosz Kunka.
- The greatest value of this equipment is the sense of empowerment it gives to its users - the patients, who can express what they feel through it and improve the quality of their daily functioning, he added.
With C-Eye, patients are able to signal their needs to medical staff or family. The use of messages during therapy can also serve a rehabilitative function by stimulating the speech centre.
Source: cowzdrowiu.pl