The findings are drawn from cognitive assessments for 80 survivors of these tumours and a control group of 40 otherwise similar people who didn’t have these malignancies. Two years after cancer treatment, 38 % of the survivors had impaired cognitive functioning, but nobody in the control group did.

“This suggests that up to at least two years after treatment is complete, a substantial minority of patients who are treated for head and neck cancer will be at risk of having deficits in several areas of cognitive function, such as being able to concentrate and remember things,” said senior study author Lori Bernstein of the University of Toronto.

Previous research has linked radiation and chemotherapy to cognitive deficits that can develop and progress many years after treatment, Bernstein said by email.

With many types of cancer treated with chemotherapy, patients can develop what’s called “chemo brain.” Symptoms vary but include things like poor focus or memory. Treatment-related pain, fatigue and malnutrition could worsen symptoms, which usually clear up after chemo is complete.

“In addition to chemotherapy treatment, incidental radiation doses to the brain might also have an effect on cognition,” said James Root of the Neurocognitive Research Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

“Much less is known about the effects of lower dose, incidental radiation on the brain,” Root, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

For the current study, researchers wanted to see how cognitive function might change over time in patients with these tumours who had both chemo and radiation.

They did four cognitive assessments, once prior to treatment and then again 6, 12 and 24 months later.

Compared to the people without cancer, the head and neck cancer survivors declined over time in several different cognitive domains, including concentration, verbal memory, and executive function, researchers report in JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.

People who had less education or suffered from depression at the start of the study were more likely to develop cognitive problems, the study also found.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how cancer treatments might cause cognitive deficits.

Another limitation of the study is that researchers only followed patients for two years, and it’s unclear what happens to cognitive abilities over longer periods of time, the authors note. Different radiation doses also might get different results.

“While this current study alone is not enough to conclude that the neurocognitive deficits experienced by study patients are as a direct result of definitive treatment, we know that there are very important side effects associated with these treatments that have become mainstay in our fight against head and neck cancers,” said Dr. Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, a researcher at Saint Louis University School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study.

Patients and families need to be prepared for the possibility that cognitive problems can develop and linger for years, Dr. Osazuwa-Peters said by email.

This comes on top of difficulties eating that result from cancer and treatments. Many survivors have trouble swallowing food, experience changes in their sense of taste or a diminished appetite, or suffer from reflux that makes meals uncomfortable.

These challenges can lead to social isolation and depression, especially when people mark special occasions with food and family meals.

“When a patient already struggling with socializing with family and friends also has to deal with loss of memory or comprehension, this may cause additional anxiety and stress, not only to the patient, but also the family and caregivers,” Osazuwa-Peters said. “It is important to recognize the possibility of loss of cognition as part of the “new normal” for these patients.”

Researchers studied almost 80,000 motorcycle drivers and nearly 6,000 passengers who were involved in crashes between 2007 and 2010. Two-thirds of the drivers were wearing helmets, compared to only 57.5 % of the passengers.

Traumatic brain injuries were the most common type of injury for drivers and passengers, the study found. But passengers experienced this more often, in 40 % of cases, compared with 36 % of cases for drivers, the researchers report in JAMA Surgery.

Even when they wear helmets, passengers are still more at risk than drivers. The rate of traumatic brain injury was 36 % among helmeted passengers, compared to 31 % among helmeted drivers.

“We believe that in certain accidents, the passenger is more likely to be ejected from the motorcycle,” said Dr. Tyler Evans of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

“This is likely to increase the risk for serious head injury despite helmet use, given that being ejected from the motorcycle at a high rate of speed may be too severe of an impact for the helmet to be as protective,” Evans said by email.

Drivers might have lower risk for these injuries because they sit behind a protective windshield and have a firm grip on the steering column, while the passenger often sits at a higher position behind the driver with little to hold on to, Evans added.

“Being directly above the back wheel, one can hypothesize that passengers are more prone to being ejected from the motorcycle, likely adding to the potential for serious head and neck injuries,” Evans said. “The drivers have the benefit of being more aware of what is in front of them and have a higher chance of bracing themselves and creating a tighter grip on the motorcycle, while the passenger often may not have the same reaction time given they are not controlling the motorcycle.”

Alcohol also played a role, the study found.

Fewer than half of passengers and drivers under the influence of alcohol wore helmets: 42 % and 49 %, respectively.

Passengers had higher traumatic brain injury rates even after researchers accounted for alcohol use, drug use, age and sex.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how helmet use or where someone sits on a motorcycle influences their odds of injuries.

Even so, the results offer fresh evidence of how helmets can help protect not just drivers, but also passengers, when there’s a motorcycle crash, said Jacob Sunshine, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle who wasn’t involved in the study.

“The primary take-away from this study is that motorcycle helmets significantly reduce head and neck injuries in both drivers and passengers,” Sunshine said by email. “Riding motorcycles is more dangerous compared to other modes of transport, and the protective benefits of wearing a motorcycle helmet while riding are clear and have been demonstrated across multiple studies.”

PCV is a subtype of wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) that is particularly prevalent in Asia Pacific. Wet AMD is a leading cause of blindness globally, and in Asia Pacific, the prevalence of wet AMD is estimated to soar to 17 million in 2040 from 7 million in 20101.

This important finding was from the PLANET study, a key clinical trial in PCV conducted mainly in Asia Pacific i.e. Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The study compared the efficacy and safety of aflibercept monotherapy (where patients received sham rescue PDT) to aflibercept plus active rescue PDT in patients with PCV.

Professor Tien Yin Wong, principal investigator of the PLANET study and retinal specialist at Singapore National Eye Centre said, “Wet AMD is a leading cause of blindness globally and many Asian patients tend to have PCV. Over the two years of the PLANET study, the anti-VEGF agent aflibercept given as a monotherapy was effective for the majority of PCV patients and adding rescue PDT when given according to the study protocol did not provide additional functional or anatomic benefits.”

“This signifies that for most patients, anti-VEGF monotherapy using agents such as aflibercept can be established as a preferred first-line treatment option for patients with visual impairment due to PCV as this approach avoids the added burden and side effects of combination therapy with PDT. Additionally, it is encouraging that in the PLANET study, among patients treated with the anti-VEGF agent aflibercept as a monotherapy approach, more than 80% did not have active polyps at the end of the two year study. However, longer term studies are needed to further clarify the role of polyp outcomes in the management of PCV,” he added.

It is projected that about 17 million people in Asia Pacific will have wet AMD by 2040 .  The causes for PCV is not known, though researchers suspect that it is caused by factors such as smoking and age (older people are more likely to be affected). Furthermore, it is not known why it is prevalent among Asians.

Proactive and regular treatment is important for patients to preserve their vision. After all, the impact of vision loss is various. Those who suffer from it require assistance in administrative tasks, self-care, driving and leisure activities. They are also more likely to fall as well as risk of having depression, even if one eye is affected.

Some previous research has linked acupressure – which uses precise finger placements at pressure points throughout the body to relieve pain – with reduced discomfort from menstrual cramps. To see if a smartphone app could help women self-administer acupressure for cramps, researchers randomly assigned 221 women to use the app or to stick with usual care for six months.

By the end of the study, women who used the acupressure app reported significantly less menstrual pain than women who didn’t, the study found.

“Because women with menstrual pain already practice self-management, an app for acupressure can be easily added,” said senior study author Dr. Claudia Witt of the Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

“It is wise to try first non-pharmacological interventions, with a good safety profile, before using a painkiller that can have side effects,” Witt said by email.

The target audience for the app, young women in their 20s and 30s, already use their phones for a variety of different tasks, making it natural for them to consider an app that teaches them how to use pressure points to ease menstrual pain, researchers note in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Witt’s team developed their own app, called AKUD, based on a consensus of acupressure experts from China, Germany and the U.S. For the current study, the researchers offered the app to women ages 18 to 34 in Berlin between 2012 and 2015.

All of the women reported their own pain levels for menstrual cramps on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being the worst. At the start of the study, women reported pain of at least 6 on this scale.

Each participant was given an app to use for six months, but only half of the women had an app with an acupressure program. The rest had a “sham” app that didn’t offer any new ways of treating pain from cramps.

By the time women in the study went through their third menstrual cycle, participants using the acupressure app reported average pain scores of 4.4, compared with 5.0 for the other women in the study.

By the sixth menstrual cycle, women with the acupressure app reported pain scores that were typically 1.4 points lower, a large enough gap to represent a clinically meaningful difference.

With acupressure, women were also less likely to use pain medications and reported fewer days with pain during their monthly menstrual cycles, the researchers also found.

One limitation of the study is that most of the participants were highly educated and prone to intense menstrual cramps, which means the results might not represent what would happen for all women experiencing menstrual pain, the authors note.

Even so, the results suggest that an acupressure app may offer some women a good approach to managing menstrual pain, said Caroline Smith, an acupressure researcher at Western Sydney University in Australia who wasn’t involved in the study but who is developing a mass-distribution app for this purpose.

“Adherence suggests the app was acceptable, and the reduction in pain over time was clinically meaningful with few side effects,” Smith said by email. “This app is relevant to women who are looking for evidenced-based self-care options to manage their pain, although as the authors point out further research to address a more generalizable group of women is needed.”

The study team analyzed data from 26 previously published studies with a total of more than 10,000 children between 4 and 13 years old. All of the prior studies measured the impact of a variety of physical activity programs on academic performance.

The authors also looked at whether the effect of exercise differed across academic subjects. Although the benefit of physical activity was strongest for mathematics, it was only slightly smaller for other subjects like language and reading, meaning that physical activity benefits learning in all academic subjects.

“Exercise influences the brain by increasing cerebral blood flow, which increases the supply of oxygen and nutrients and promotes blood capillaries formation, increases the neuronal connectivity through the promotion of the synaptogenesis and the availability of neurotransmitters,” said study coauthor Ivan Cavero Redondo of Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca, Spain.

“Beyond the neurobiological explanations, exercise includes an important social component that fosters its benefits on mental health,” Redondo said by email.

At a time when many schools struggle to set aside time for gym classes amid a push to raise test scores by devoting more time to academics, the findings offer fresh evidence that physical activity is one way to help boost kids’ grades.

When kids take time out of the school day for physical activity, whether in dedicated gym classes or by incorporating movement into classroom lessons, students may have an easier time focusing on their classwork and do better in school, Redondo said.

Overall, physical activity appeared to have the biggest impact on keeping kids on task and focused on their work, the study found. Students who participated in various experimental exercise programs also did better at math, reading and language lessons than their peers who didn’t participate in these programs.

Exercise had a bigger impact on school performance when it was incorporated into the school day than when it was added as an extracurricular activity, researchers report in Pediatrics.

The experimental exercise programs tested in the smaller studies increased physical activity time from 10 minutes to 60 minutes per day.

Sometimes these programs expanded recess, while in other instances the added activity was achieved with after-school sports or creating active breaks between lessons during the school day.

One limitation of the study was that researchers lacked enough data from a large enough group of participants to determine which types of physical activity interventions might have the biggest impact on academics and school achievement, the authors note.

Even so, the analysis offers convincing evidence that physical activity can enhance children’s reading and math skills, said Sara Benjamin Neelon, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Schools need to get on board and prioritize active time for children both during and after the school day,” Benjamin Neelon said by email. “Kids spend a large portion of their waking hours at school and should spend at least part of that time being physically active.”

Physical activity may help kids do better in school by improving behaviour, memory and cognitive function, said Jordan Carlson, a researcher at Children’s Mercy Kansas City who wasn’t involved in the study.

“A substantial amount of evidence shows that physical activity improves kids’ attention and behaviour in the classroom and reduces classroom disruptions,” Carlson said by email. “Kids have an internal drive to be physically active, and inhibiting their need to be physically active during school can lead to behavioural problems.”

Because kids often get too little exercise time during the school day, parents need to provide these opportunities outside of school, Carlson added.

“However, the beneficial effect of physical activity on academic achievement appears to be specific to school-based physical activity,” Carlson said. “Parents should talk with their children, teachers, and administrators about opportunities for physical activity at school.”

“Our collective goal must be to embrace ways to reduce pollution drastically,” said Dr. Edgar Gutirrez, the Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica and the President of the 2017 assembly at its opening here Monday.

“Only through stronger collective action, beginning in Nairobi this week, can we start cleaning up the planet globally and save countless lives.”

Everyone on Earth is affected by pollution, according to a new UN Environment report, “The Executive Director’s Report: Towards a Pollution-Free Planet”, which the meeting is using as the basis for defining the problems and laying out new action areas.

The report’s recommendations – political leadership and partnerships at all levels, action on the worst pollutions, lifestyle changes, low-carbon tech investments, and advocacy – are based on analysis of pollution in all its forms, including air, land, freshwater, marine, chemical and waste pollution.

Overall, environmental degradation causes nearly one in four of all deaths worldwide, or 12.6 million people a year, and the widespread destruction of key ecosystems.

KPJ is the first provider of private healthcare services in Malaysia to adopt the technology. Currently, Watson for Oncology is available at five specialist hospitals: KPJ Damansara Specialist Hospital (KPJ Damansara); KPJ Ampang Puteri Specialist Hospital (KPJ Ampang Puteri); KPJ Johor Specialist Hospital (KPJ Johor); KPJ Ipoh Specialist Hospital (KPJ Ipoh) and KPJ Sabah Specialist Hospital (KPJ Sabah).

“We believe that introducing Watson for Oncology will increase KPJ’s capability to provide cancer patients with treatment options that are based on facts and medical evidence,” said KPJ Healthcare President and Managing Director, Dato’ Amiruddin Abdul Satar.

He added: “This investment in cognitive technologies is in line with KPJ’s vision to become an oncology hub in Malaysia and the region as our clinicians seek to continually deliver excellent care to the 3 million patients we serve each year.”

Patients will not be charged additional cost for the usage of the technology.

According to the Malaysian National Cancer Registry, cancer is the third most common cause of death among Malaysians at 14% after respiratory (19%) and circulatory (23%) diseases. Women have a higher risk of cancer compared to men with the most common type being breast cancer while colorectal and prostate cancer are common among men.

Watson for Oncology can summarize key medical attributes of a patient, and provide information to oncologists to help them deliver treatment options based on training from MSK oncologists. Watson for Oncology ranks the treatment options, linking to peer reviewed studies that have been curated by MSK.

It also provides a large corpus of medical evidence for a physician to consider, drawing on more than 300 medical journals, more than 200 textbooks, and nearly 15 million pages of text to provide insights about different treatment options. IBM and MSK have been accelerating Watson for Oncology’s training and the technology is now available to assist clinicians in developing treatment plans for breast, lung, colorectal, cervical, ovarian, gastric, prostate and bladder cancers.

“This latest collaboration with KPJ in Malaysia further expands IBM’s growing footprint of well-known healthcare institutions that are using Watson in the Asia Pacific region,” said Chong Chye Neo, Managing Director, IBM Malaysia.

“KPJ is on the cutting edge in bringing cognitive computing into the clinical workflow to augment and scale the ability of their clinicians to bring quality care to their patients.”

1.    What are the chances of stroke affecting the ability to understand and process language in stroke patients?

Associate Professor Elizabeth Cardell (PhD, Griffith University):Aphasia is quite common. Worldwide, around15 million people suffer a cerebrovascular accident (stroke) each year. The world population is ageing so the number of strokes is expected to increase in the future.  Aphasia, which is difficulty understanding and expressing spoken or written language, occurs in around 33-38% of people following a stroke, Around 1 in 250 people are living with aphasia in developed countries. Approximately 60% of people initially diagnosed with aphasia have continuing communication issues one year after their stroke. If the stroke occurs on the left side of a person’s brain, there is a much higher chance of aphasia occurring compared to a stroke in the right side of the brain.

2.    How does stroke affect one’s ability to understand and process language?

EC: The brain has specialised areas that control different behaviours and functions. Understanding speech and languageand finding the words and sentences to speakare controlled by known, well-defined areas of the brain. If a stroke affects the parts of the brain responsible for language functions, aphasia occurs.The effect of the damage is to make information about words (sounds, meaning) difficult to access in the delicately-timed and rapid windows required for normal language processing. Generally, language functions are located in the left side of the brain. Therefore, a left-sided brain event is more likely to result in aphasia than a right-sided event. Also, depending on where the stroke has occurred, different types of aphasia may arise. For example, some people may say lots of words fluently but they do not make sense. Other people may speak nonfluently, using single words, devoid of sentences and grammar. Some people have good comprehension; others have poor comprehension. If the reading and writing areas of the brain are affected by the stroke, difficulties in these domains also will be present. Hence, how language is affected hinges on where the damage has been in the brain.

3.    How can aphasia affect the communication between patient and caregiver?

EC: Aphasia can have devastating effects on both the person and the carer during their interactions. The person with aphasiaoften knows what they want to say, but is unable to “get it out” or the words are “coming in from everywhere”. The person may not be able to understand what the carer is telling them, and knows this. Verbal interactions can stall, become stilted and one-sided, and guesswork can appear. Often neither person’s needs are satisfied.

Insight into their difficulties can make people with aphasia feel many emotions – frustration, anger, and sadness. Indeed, depression is twice as likely to occur in people with aphasia asin stroke surviviors without aphasia. In addition, people with aphasia often feel a strong sense of loss – loss of their identity as a communicator and as a person. Clearly, all these reactions impact on carers and can make them feel helpless, frustrated, angry, and sad. All these emotional reactions will change the dynamics of communication.

Sometimes people with aphasia want to be assisted with “finding the word/s”, while other people find this assistance intrusive and disrespectful – they want to do it themselves! It is important to understand these lines and assist when the person wants assistance.

4.    What are common misconceptions of aphasia?

EC: Arguably, the foremostmisconception is that people who have aphasia are in some way mentally affected and have lost their intelligence. Unless the damage has been very extensive, people with aphasia have difficulties with language and language alone. The person is the same, intelligent individual as they were before their stroke and their aphasia.

An ongoing fallacy is that the words and language are ‘lost” in aphasia. Unlike dementia, where true loss and degradation of information occurs over time, the information is represented in aphasia  but is difficult to access in a timely manner, due to underactivity, overactivity, or general processing impairments. Hence therapy does not reteach words. Rather, therapy modulates and strengthens existing representations to a point where they are easily available for the speaker.

Another misconception is that without good language abilities there is little hope for a rich, productive life. Many people currently are very successfully living with aphasia. For some, treatment continues and positive gains continue to be made. For others, whole communication has been embraced (that is, not just spoken communication) to get their messages across. People with aphasia can be active and proactive contributors to society.

A final misconception is that people with aphasia need to be protected from complex communication situations. This is an understandable reaction. We all have the desire to protect when a loved one is vulnerable. However, people with aphasia need to be out in the world, participating in typical social interactions to the best of their ability. They may not be able to contribute much at the outset but, over time and as they improve, their contributions and confidence will grow. Use it or lose it and use it to improve it are essential from a social and therapeutic perspective.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for aphasia. People recover to varying degrees, and people who receive language therapy have better language and wellbeing outcomes than people who do not receive therapy.

5.    How can the caregiver be better equipped with dealing with stroke patients with aphasia?

EC: Already, much is being done to educate people with aphasia and carers about the impact that aphasia can have on them. Such education is critical. Caregivers need to realise that socialisation for their loved one is extremely important; caregivers also need to be prepared to take on the role as an advocate – for services, support, resources. Attendance at support groups for people with aphasia and groups for caregivers can be eye-opening and rewarding. Knowing that you are not alone is very powerful, and learning from others who have walked in your shoes can be inspiring and liberating.

Caregivers also can be given training by speech pathologiststo enhance their communication skills and interactions with people with aphasia. This specialised training has good evidence behind it. Also, speech pathologists can teach caregivers how best to use alternative communication devices and aids (e.g., communication boards, computer, Apps) with individuals to optimise two-way communication.

6.    What are the newer technologies and innovations that are helping stroke patients with aphasia achieve better and faster rehabilitation?

EC: The last decade has seen a greater understanding about the brain and its behaviour and new insights into how therapy can change the brain. Neuroimaging has been influential here. The last decade also has seen much more evidence around treatments for different types of aphasia. However, there is no magic wand that can guarantee positive results or speed up treatment outcomes. What has become clearer are two key issues: (1) treatment may need to be different at different time points following aphasia to account for different neurobiological recovery processes and different client needs and priorities, and (2) treatment needs to be sufficiently intense and/or long enough to induce long-term change.

The recent elaboration and application of the principles of neuroplasticity and motor learning principles to aphasia underpin neurorehabiltation, opening up some new lines of enquiry which and have led to some more efficient therapies and more cost-effective service delivery models of aphasia intervention than in the past. With competing resource demands, traditional face-to-face treatment sessions may not be possible or sustainable in some services. To this end, the value of group therapy has been widely explored, and computerised, App-based, and online therapies are emerging as useful adjunctive therapies, especially when individually tailored to a person’s unique needs. Building further capacity in treatment intensity through therapy led by volunteers, allied health assistants, and students also shows promise.Direct interventions, such as pharmacological treatments may be beneficial for some people with aphasia, but much definition still needs to occur. Similarly, some promising results from other direct treatments such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation have emerged to suggest that direct neuromodulation is possible to enhance language function. Also, the tyranny of distance is no more, with videoconferencing platforms such as Skype and WebEx allowing treatment delivery directly into people’s home under telepractice. However, one of the biggest yet simplest changes in the past decade in Australia has been a marked increase in cliniciansunderstandingand appreciating the evidence and value of aphasia treatment. The result of this paradigm shift is that clinicians now prioritise and proactively assess and treat people with aphasia in the acute and subacute phases, rather than viewing aphasia as a secondary priority after swallowing management, which occurred for many years.

7.    How can neurorehabilitation contribute to managing aphasia in patients?

EC: Neurorehabiltation targets impairments in a focussed manner, thus promotingexperience dependent neuroplasticity. However, the outcomes of improved language and communication can have a profound impact on the persons’ wellbeing and participation in life, and greater participation in life and enjoyment is the true measure of the success of any treatment. Aphasia therapy startingwithin the first three months after the stroke has been shown to have benefits over spontaneous recovery, with some studies showing twice the recovery effect size of untreated individuals. Therefore, early neurorehabiltation is vital. However, there also is compelling evidence that shows aphasia therapy, when delivered using neurorehabiltation principles, can increase language, participation, and quality of life irrespective of how long ago the stroke occurred.

8.    How can managing aphasia contribute to a stroke patient’s overall rehabilitation?

EC: Having aphasia can be perceived to be a barrier when undertaking other forms of rehabilitation, such as the physical therapies,as these all involve language in their implementation. However, most people with aphasia are able to copy and fully participate in other therapies as once they work past what needs to be done from the verbal messages, the person’s memory, motivation, intelligence and so forth is the same as pre-stoke. It is important that the speech pathologist spends some time working alongside the physical therapists, in a true interdisciplinary manner, and provides these other health professionals with valuable tools to optimise their interactions and communication with people with aphasia.

People with aphasia want to speak, and in an ideal world treatment should be for as long as it needs to be. However, with today’s resourcing demands and constraints, this often is not possible. People will not be discharged from hospital if they are not safe, and poor communication can result in people remaining in care. Therefore, it becomes even more important to ensure that people with aphasia have access to treatment, with sufficient intensity. Often too, aphasia persists more severely and longer than the physical disabilities from a stroke. Again, the issue of treatment access is an imperative. Anecdotally, I have had more than handful of people with aphasia reveal, “I was frustrated that I couldn’t walk, but what really got to me and upset me was not being able to talk…” Communication is a basic human right. We now have good evidence. We can move forward, confidently, and start to give back that right to people with aphasia.

Prepared by:

Singapore Rehabilitation Conference speaker

Associate Professor Elizabeth Cardell PhD, Griffith University

About RehabTech Asia

Organised by SingEx Exhibitions, RehabTech Asia conference and exhibition offers the industry a common and targeted platform for policy makers, healthcare and medical professionals and solution providers to discuss, network and collaborate on ways to improve the quality of lives for the aged and disabled through technology and innovations for them to achieve personal growth, employment, independence and happiness in life. Singapore Rehabilitation Conference (SRC) was one of the three conferences held at RehabTech Asia 2015.

The Swiss medtech company Hocoma will be using conference and trade show RehabTech Asia 2015 to launch their Valedo Therapy Concept range in Asia. The Valedo system is a departure for Hocoma who are best known for rehabilitation devices for lower and upper limb disabilities caused by brain and spinal cord injuries, stroke, and other neurological conditions. Rather than neurological motor rehabilitation, the Valedo range, consisting of the ValedoShape, ValedoMotion and Valedo, are complementary products for a healthy back.

Hocoma are potentially tapping into a huge market as back pain is ranked as one of the top three reasons for GP visits in the developed world with as many as 80 percent of us suffering from it at some stage in our lives. Its prevalence among workers in modern cities has led to an explosion in the numbers of chiropractors and osteopaths.

The Valedo range offers a high-tech alternative based on clinical spinal assessments and computer- monitored functional exercise training, which is made more fun for the patient by being incorporated into a virtual world computer game.

Managing Director of Hocoma South East Asia and Singapore, Zen Koh says, “The Valedo Therapy Concept is effective because it is simple and fun to use. We will be launching it at RehabTech Asia and making it available to clinics in the region after that.”

ValedoShape is a non-invasive device that provides precise, reliable spinal analysis with a high degree of data validity when compared to X-ray images. The resulting 3D graphics of the sagittal and frontal plane are easy to understand and can be used to support communication with the patient.

Using wireless sensors attached to skin to record movements of the trunk and pelvis and transferring them to a monitoring device, the ValedoMotion provides quantitative assessments of movement and dysfunction allowing the therapist to tailor therapy. Precise and repeatable measurements enable an objective analysis and documentation of the patient’s therapy progress.

Accurate real-time visual feedback helps the therapist train correct movements and thus improve patient’s awareness of his movements. Immersion in a game-like environment motivates patients to practice goal-oriented movements to control robot characters in different settings such as flying cross-country or navigating an underwater world. While playing an avatar, one corner of the screen shows the patient’s spinal alignment and indicates if their posture is wrong, the movement is incorrect or the exercise is performed at the wrong speed. Once the patient has received one-to-one training from the therapist he can be left to continue, self-guided, allowing the therapist to supervise multiple patients at once.

The ValedoMotion was developed in collaboration with the team led by Prof. Dr. Jan Kool at Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland and is suitable for a wide range of patients including non-specific back pain, general muscular deficits of the trunk, malalignment of the spine such as in kyphosis, scoliosism or neurological conditions such as stroke, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease.

The Valedo, a home version of the ValedoMotion, tackles the most common reasons for the failure of, or non-compliance with, therapy programmes outside the clinic: patient’s poor awareness of their own movements, incorrect execution of exercises and lack of motivation.

The Valedo reminds patients to exercise, allows them to play the same exercise-based computer games on their iPads or iPhones, monitors and corrects their movements and reports the results back to the therapist.

Singapore, 17 March 2015 – The Singapore Rehabilitation Conference, along with the NeuroRehabilitation Medicine & Innovation Asia Pacific Congress and the Rehabilitation Engineering Society and Assistive Technology of North America (RESNA) Asia Pacific Conference will be held in conjunction with the second edition of RehabTech Asia from 26 to 30 March 2015 at Singapore EXPO Convention and Exhibition Centre and its convention wing MAX Atria. The addition of these conferences reinforces RehabTech Asia’s commitment to providing an integrated platform in Asia for meaningful discussions about how society and the industry can rehabilitate patients with disabilities, enable the elderly and improve overall standards of integrated care.

The annual Singapore Rehabilitation Conference, jointly organised by SingEx Exhibitions and Tan Tock Seng Hospital, focuses on improving and increasing access to technology and rehabilitation products and services to enable inclusion and participation for people with disabilities.

Keynote speaker at the Singapore Rehabilitation Conference, Dr Alberto Esquenazi, Chief Medical Officer at MossRohab, Pennysylvania, USA, says, “I will be looking at case studies where bioengineering, when applied to improve care, has played a key role in developing substitutes to improve human function. I hope to plant small seeds for new ideas and encourage collaborative communication between medical professionals, engineers and the potential users to further advance what is possible as new technology becomes available.”

RehabTech Asia will also feature the inaugural NeuroRehabilitation Medicine & Innovation Asia Congress, which aims to be the premier networking platform for neurology, neurosurgery, and physical medicine and rehabilitation professionals interested in improving the continuum of care for people with disabilities. Delegates can expect to learn about the latest developments, share ideas and experience, and create sustainable collaborations.

Also for the first time, RESNA will be bringing the first Asian edition of the RESNA Asia Pacific Conference to be held alongside RehabTech Asia. With the theme “Technology & Ageing”, the conference will be a unique, multi-disciplinary gathering of assistive technology professionals from around the world.

RESNA will also be presenting the AT Fundamentals Course which will provide interested individuals with an overview of numerous areas of assistive technology. It is also designed to broaden the knowl­edge of AT providers. Multiple case studies will be used during the course to illustrate applications of principles and theories in assistive technology provision.

For more information on the conferences, please log on to: www.singaporerehab.com, www.neurorehabconference.com, and www.resnaconference.com.