“There aren’t a lot of intervention options for kids with cerebral palsy who have hand hemiparesis to improve their motor skills and hand function,” says Fu. “Our goal was to take what we’ve learned from working with stroke patients and try to impact other forms of hemiplegia.”
Fu’s research, funded by a training grant from the National Institutes of Health, initially focused on rehabilitation for adult stroke patients. As a post-doctoral researcher, Fu joined a group at the FES Center led by Jayme Knutson, PhD, associate director of regulatory affairs at the center, an assistant professor in Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, a senior staff scientist at MetroHealth Medical Center and the director of research at MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio. The group is using CCFES, a novel neurotherapeutic application of surface electrical stimulation, to help stroke survivors recover voluntary hand function and ankle dorsiflexion.
Fu’s contribution to the group was to develop custom therapy video games that could be used in conjunction with CCFES. The games, which are played by opening and closing the paretic hand, facilitate motor practice based on learning principles such as goal-oriented movement, intense repetition and task variation
Curby first heard about the intervention during an in-service educational session led by Knutson at Cleveland Clinic Children’s rehabilitation hospital. “I sat in the presentation thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness! I could use this for my kids,” recalls Curby. “I was excited about the possibilities.” She contacted Fu that day and proposed they work together.
Throughout the summer, Curby met with two cerebral palsy patients with hemiplegia twice a week for two hours during the first three weeks, then once a week for a two-hour session the remaining three weeks. CCFES enabled the children to open their paretic hand by stimulating finger and thumb extensors with surface electrodes.