Published Study Demonstrates Kickstart® Effectiveness for Restoring Walking Ability
Clear therapeutic benefits shown for stroke survivors, even several years post-injury
SEATTLE – Today Cadence Biomedical™, maker of the Kickstart® device, which helps people with neurological conditions recover and walk again, announced its first peer-reviewed publication, “Mobility Training for Patients Recovering from Neurological Injuries with Kickstart®: A Case Series.” The study, published in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation International, documents the therapeutic effect of using Kickstart, a wearable rehabilitation device that uses a spring-based technology to enable proper walking. Cadence co-founder and COO Brian Glaister was the lead author of the study in collaboration with Nancy Byl, PhD PT, Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Francisco as senior author.
“It’s common for patients with neurological injuries such as a stroke to reach a plateau in their walking recovery. This can be frustrating for patients, families and therapists,” said Dr. Byl. “Kickstart has the potential to be an affordable and effective therapy to help patients improve walking speed, gait and endurance, ultimately leading to the goal of walking independently in the community.”
The clinical case series describes the outcomes when patients with chronic impairments (e.g. stroke and spinal cord impairment) integrated the Kickstart both during PT-supervised gait training in the clinic and at home. Each case served as their own control, since all participants had recently plateaued in progress with conventional therapy and were exercising and walking at home for 8-12 weeks prior to beginning the case study training protocol.
In addition to improvements in walking speed and distance, participants demonstrated gains in gait quality and independent function that were maintained even when Kickstart was no longer used. The study found that in each case, walking speed and endurance progressed for each patient, with improvement of walking distance ranging from 1.8 to five times farther as a result of using Kickstart. All patients were able to walk an average of two times faster than at baseline.
The study is the first peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating Kickstart may play an important role in improving walking independence for patients with neurological injuries.
Recovery of walking is the most often stated goal of stroke survivors and is strongly correlated with lower mortality, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, reduced risk of hip fracture, fewer symptoms of depression, and faster integration into the community. According to the CDC, stroke is the number one cause for serious, long-term disability in the U.S.
“It’s immensely gratifying and encouraging to see clinicians using Kickstart to speed up improvement for their neurological clients, even up to 20 years after their injuries,” said Mr. Glaister. “This paper represents a critical dataset showing Kickstart’s efficacy as a therapeutic tool, which we hope will make a difference in the lives of many more stroke survivors and help to transform health outcomes.”
This research was supported in part by the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Orthopedic Research Program.
About Cadence Biomedical
Cadence Biomedical is a commercial-stage medical device company headquartered in Seattle, WA. Cadence manufactures and markets Kickstart®, a neurorehabilitation device designed to accelerate walking recovery in individuals with impairments from stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions. Kickstart’s unique, patented Exotendon™ technology functions like an artificial tendon to provide stability, support and swing assistance which enables ambulation in the clinic and ultimately into the community. Kickstart is available for inpatient use and is covered by Medicare and most private insurers as a personal device for outpatient and home use.
To learn more about Kickstart and our commitment to empower patients to ‘recover to walking’, please visit Cadence on the web at www.cadencebiomedical.com.
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CONTACT:
For Cadence Biomedical
Sian Wu, swu@cplusc.com, 206-701-4734