Melanie Reid's left arm has been completely paralyzed since she suffered a cervical spine injury while riding 14 years ago.
After a revolutionary new treatment with electrical impulses, he can now use his hand to scroll on his smartphone and unbuckle his seat belt in the car.
This treatment, combined with physiotherapy, is believed to restore some movement to people paralyzed from the neck down.
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Research that included 60 patients showed that 43 of them achieved some progress in the motor skills of the hands and arms.
The research team is now seeking official approval to use the system to treat patients in hospitals in the United States (US).
The device has electrodes that are placed on the injured part of the body.
High-frequency current amplifies the commands that our brain sends to our hands and arms via nerves, and in Melanie's case, these "messages" are weakened due to a spinal injury.
Melanie, 67, a reporter for The Times of London who lives in Scotland, was among the first patients to try the new treatment.
She had limited ability to move her hands and arms and could not move her left hand at all.
For two months, she underwent electrical impulse therapy combined with intensive physiotherapy.
She says she has made some lasting small progress that has significantly changed her daily life.
"I can unbuckle my belt with my left thumb, now I trust this hand so much that it can lift a cup of coffee, I can pick up some small things in my hand and, for example, strain rice," she says.
Although during the research most of the patients were able to make more movements while the device was on, it is still impossible to say to what extent the long-term progress - when the patient is not wearing the device - was achieved thanks to the electrical impulses and how much to the physiotherapy.
"When someone is part of a study and is given a lot of attention over many months, some progress will be made," says Professor Robert Brownstone, a surgeon and professor of neurology at University College London, who is not part of the research team.
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In addition to physiotherapy, progress can also be achieved due to the feeling of hope and support created by participating in the trial of a possible treatment, he adds.
Melanie said that she could only do some things while the device was on, such as wringing out a face towel and lifting some objects, but that she felt that the treatment made her stronger.
"I can't attribute all of the progress to the electrical stimulation, but I feel like it accelerated and encouraged it," she said.
"Miracles don't happen with spinal injuries [but] if this device can enable someone with tetraplegia (quadriplegia - complete loss of both arms and legs) to raise their arm to put food in their mouth or drink, then it's life-changing ".
It has been shown that the greatest improvement in patients with spinal injuries occurs soon after the injury.
The patients selected for the study had injuries between 34 and XNUMX years old and had made little progress in the meantime.
Mariel Pursel, director of research at the Scottish Center for Innovation in Spinal Cord Injury Treatment at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, has been treating Melanie since her accident 14 years ago.
Her department, as part of the leading research center in this field in the world, was invited to participate in the study.
She said she had never seen such progress in a patient with such an old injury before.
"Currently, there is no single drug or device that has been approved that has a clinical benefit for patients," she said.
The device is the latest invention of a Swiss team, led by Professor Gregor Kortin, at the EPFL Medical Research Laboratory in Lausanne.
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Using surgically implanted spinal stimulation devices, they have so far helped 26 people with spinal cord injuries below the neck to walk again.
But, for now, this technique is applied only in laboratory tests.
The new device, which does not require surgery, is also the team's first attempt to find a treatment for people who have lost the ability to move their hands.
Professor Kortin has published evidence that electrical stimulation combined with physiotherapy does achieve limited recovery of damaged nerves.
"We are very close to providing these patients with life-changing technology," he told BBC News.
The US regulatory body, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), studies clinical trial data that are published in the professional journal Nature Medicine, to assess whether the device is safe and whether the benefit is significant.
In the event that the administration approves this medical device based on technology developed by a medical technology company Onward Medical, will be used to treat tetraplegics in American hospitals.
If the device gets the green light in the US, then the team that developed the technology will seek permission to use it in other parts of the world.
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