The robotic neck device can help analyze the impacts of cancer treatment

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A new robotic device from researchers at Columbia Engineering and colleagues at the Columbia Department of Otorhinolaryngology can help doctors analyze the impact of cancer treatments on patients’ neck mobility and guide their recovery. .

None i it was the seventh most common cancer worldwide in 2018, with 890,000 new cases and 450,000 deaths, accounting for 3% of all cancers and more than 1.5% of cancer deaths in the United States. Tal can be extended to in the neck, as well as other organs of the body. Surgically removing the lymph nodes from the neck can help doctors investigate the risk of spreading, but it can cause pain and stiffness in the shoulders and neck for years to come.

Identifying which patients may have problems with neck movement “can be difficult, as the results are often subtle and difficult to quantify,” said Scott Troob, assistant professor of otorhinolaryngology. and head of the plastic and reconstructive facial surgery division at Columbia Medical Center Irving University. However, successfully targeting what difficulties they might have with mobility can help patients benefit from specific physiotherapy interventions, he explained.

Sunil K. Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering and rehabilitative and regenerative medicine and director of ROAR (Sunil K. Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering and rehabilitative and regenerative medicine), the current techniques and tools that doctors have to judge movement that a patient may have lost in the neck and shoulders are a bit raw. Robotics and Rehabilitation Laboratory) at Columbia Engineering. They usually provide unreliable measurements or require too much time and space to set up for use in routine clinical visits.

To develop a more reliable and portable tool for analyzing neck mobility, Agrawal and colleagues were inspired by a robotic neck previously developed to analyze head and neck movements in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In collaboration with the Troob group, they have now designed a new robotic neck stealing device. His study appears in the journal on July 12 Portable technologies.

The new device was made with 3D printed materials and economical sensors. The easy-to-carry device was based on the head and neck movements of 10 healthy individuals.

“This is the first study of its kind in which a portable neck robotic device has been designed to characterize the full range of head and neck movement,” Agrawal said.

In the new study, researchers used the prototype nails, along with electrical measurements of muscle activity, to compare the mobility of five necks. before and one month after surgical removal of the lymph nodes in the neck. They found that their device could accurately detect changes in the patient’s neck movements during routine clinical visits.

“The use of the sensitive cervical device allows the surgeon to examine patients postoperatively to find movement difficulties, quantify their degree of impairment, and select patients for physical therapy and rehabilitation,” Troob said.

“Patients constantly identify the need for rehabilitation and guided exercise after surgery as an unmet need in their medical care,” Troob said. “This work will lay the groundwork for the proper identification of patients for the intervention. In addition, we hope that by using the neck wall, we can objectively quantify their improvement and develop evidence-based rehabilitation programs.” .

In the future, researchers hope to investigate larger groups of patients and use them prepare to follow patients through physiotherapy to develop evidence-based rehabilitation protocols, Troob said. They would also like to develop similar spelling devices for other surgical sites, such as the forearm, ankle or knee, he added.


The robotic neck device dramatically improves the functions of patients with ALS


More information:
Biing-Chwen Chang et al, A new cervical apparatus to characterize alterations in neck mobility after neck dissection in patients with head and neck cancer, Portable technologies (2021). DOI: 10.1017 / wtc.2021.8

Citation: The robotic neck device can help analyze the impacts of cancer treatment (2021, July 19) retrieved July 19, 2021 at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-robotic-neck- brace-cancer-treatment.html

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