What kind of adaptive equipment do children with spinal cord injuries need? - Lawrence Vogel, MD

There’s a lot of adaptive equipment that children with spinal cord injuries need. And there’s a lot of challenges related to this, one of which, is again, children grow. Unless they have a very incomplete spinal cord injury, the vast majority of children will need a wheelchair. We think that should be obtained early on, so it allows a child to be independent and using it—whether or not it be a power or a manual wheelchair. Even children as young, maybe even as young a year of age, but certainly 18 months and 24 months of age, can start using power chairs if that’s what, what’s required. There’s a variety of braces that we can utilize that allow individuals to stand or to walk. So one of the braces sometimes we’ll use in children as young as nine or 12 months of age, up to three to five years of age is more of a standing type of brace called a parapodium. There’re other braces that allow children to do more walking, a variety of leg braces. We use something called reciprocating gait orthosis, we call it RGOs. But, it’s a brace that allows an individual to provide some kind of reciprocating gait, so one foot goes after another. You know, a child who maybe four or five years of age is out there on a bicycle or tricycle, usually tricycle, then bicycle. How do we get someone with a spinal cord injury who is either paraplegic ,or has some arm function, has tetraplegia, how do we get them to go out and be able to wheel around with their friends or families? And there’s a variety of adaptive tricycles and hand driven tricycles that kids can utilize.