Tinelli Francesca, Cioni Giovanni, Purpura Giulia
Department of Developmental Neuroscience, IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Pisa, Italy.
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Front Neurol. 2017 Nov 21;8:621. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2017.00621. eCollection 2017.
Telerehabilitation, defined as the method by which communication technologies are used to provide remote rehabilitation, although still underused, could be as efficient and effective as the conventional clinical rehabilitation practices. In the literature, there are descriptions of the use of telerehabilitation in adult patients with various diseases, whereas it is seldom used in clinical practice with child and adolescent patients. We have developed a new audiovisual telerehabilitation (AVT) system, based on the multisensory capabilities of the human brain, to provide a new tool for adults and children with visual field defects in order to improve ocular movements toward the blind hemifield. The apparatus consists of a semicircular structure in which visual and acoustic stimuli are positioned. A camera is integrated into the mechanical structure in the center of the panel to control eye and head movements. Patients can use this training system with a customized software on a tablet. From hospital, the therapist has complete control over the training process, and the results of the training sessions are automatically available within a few minutes on the hospital website. In this paper, we report the AVT system protocol and the preliminary results on its use by three adult patients. All three showed improvements in visual detection abilities with long-term effects. In the future, we will test this apparatus with children and their families. Since interventions for impairments in the visual field have a substantial cost for individuals and for the welfare system, we expect that our research could have a profound socio-economic impact avoiding prolonged and intensive hospital stays.
远程康复被定义为利用通信技术提供远程康复的方法，尽管其使用尚不普遍，但可能与传统的临床康复实践一样高效且有效。在文献中，有关于在患有各种疾病的成年患者中使用远程康复的描述，而在儿童和青少年患者的临床实践中很少使用。我们基于人类大脑的多感官能力开发了一种新的视听远程康复（AVT）系统，为患有视野缺陷的成人和儿童提供一种新工具，以改善朝向盲半视野的眼球运动。该设备由一个半圆形结构组成，视觉和听觉刺激位于其中。一个摄像头集成在面板中心的机械结构中，用于控制眼睛和头部运动。患者可以在平板电脑上使用定制软件来使用这个训练系统。治疗师可以在医院对训练过程进行完全控制，训练课程的结果会在几分钟内自动在医院网站上提供。在本文中，我们报告了AVT系统方案以及三名成年患者使用该系统的初步结果。所有三名患者的视觉检测能力均有改善且具有长期效果。未来，我们将对儿童及其家庭进行该设备的测试。由于针对视野障碍的干预对个人和福利系统都有巨大成本，我们预计我们的研究可能会产生深远的社会经济影响，避免长时间的密集住院治疗。
