Step by step

“It just an average day,” Anna recalls. “The usual ups and downs at work, a gym class, then a glass of wine with a friend on the way home, nothing extraordinary.” But it was just as Anna had curled up on the couch to scroll through her social media feeds and catch up on her messages that she realized that the day had been anything but ordinary for family friend, Peter. “There it was: a group chat message saying that Peter had suffered a stroke that morning and was in hospital. I automatically thought of the last time I saw him at a get-together, just a week ago; he was tending to the barbecue and telling us about his upcoming ski trip. I was just shocked. It was hard to imagine him as a stroke patient.”

Anna’s reaction highlights the intrinsic nature of such medical events. They are so sudden, so quick, so seemingly indiscriminate. Strokes, or cerebrovascular accidents (to use medical terminology), are life-changing moments that strike the patient down, often out of the blue. Recovery is a long process. For many sufferers, this involves relearning even the most taken-for-granted actions, like walking and talking.

A growing challenge

It’s a story that, across the world, is all too common. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15 million people per year suffer a stroke[1]. Often, a stroke results in brain damage due to the sudden reduction in blood flow to the brain cells. It is estimated that, after three months, 20 percent of people who lost mobility as a result of a stroke remain wheelchair bound, while approximately seventy percent of sufferers walk at reduced velocity[2]. In many cases, patients undergo a lengthy and gruelling period of rehabilitation in order to re-establish the muscle strength, balance and range of mobility that they lost.

The reality is that stroke rates are increasing. According to a 2020 research report[3], the number of people living with stroke is estimated to increase by 27 percent between 2017 and 2047 in the European Union, mainly because of population ageing and improved survival rates. And given the prevalence of neurological and physiological damage following a stroke, the need for effective rehabilitation methods is acute.

But for stroke patients like Anna’s friend Peter, there is some positive news. Modern rehabilitation methods are embracing not only proven repetitive, task-specific approaches, but also cutting-edge technologies that are enabling people to walk again and re-establish their independence and quality of life more quickly. Much research is being done in this area and the technological advancements that are emerging in this space are encouraging. One such field is that of robotic exoskeletons, wearable mechanized devices that assist gait rehabilitation by amplifying and assisting natural motion.