Bulgarian Christmas 2012

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) is a new, large and promising step in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. It gives different, bigger and better opportunities for patients for proper learning and recovery of movement coordination and centre of gravity control; these are controlled by computer feedback. The participation of the subjective factor in recovery - the therapist – is minimized through automation, computerization and independent control of the therapeutic session.

* Robot-assisted treadmill training (RATT) helps patients improve their walking skills. The patient is positioned on the robot-device that teaches him/her to move his/her feet in the normal physiological pattern. The patient is hooked up to a special harness over an electrical walking trail, and one skeletal robot frame fixed at the side of the legs with belts, moves them in a predetermined pattern. A computer controls the model of the leg movement and calculates the reaction of the body in response to the movement carried out by the robot.

Various and strenuous manual therapeutic techniques for recovery of walking limit the frequency and especially the duration of the therapy, while the application of the RATT allows for more continuous and intensive rehabilitation in a standardized and consistent pattern of treatment. In this way the subjectivity associated with personal responsibility, endurance and knowledge of the therapist in terms of helping the patient learn to walk is avoided. LOKOHELP can operate continuously and precisely following the set individual regimen without being influenced by the personal qualities of the therapist.

The device for robot-assisted treadmill training "LOKOHELP"
is a donation from the "Bulgarian Christmas 2012",
as an initiative of Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev.

"A state vizit of President Rosen Plevneliev, Mayor of Sofia Fandakova and Ministеr of Health Atanasova in the Specialized Hospital for Rehabilitation of Children with Cerebral Palsy, where was decided the Hospital to be a face of the donation-campaign ''Bulgarian Christmas 2012''.