Bioengineering A Walk To First

Bioengineering a Walk to First

July 2011

Rob Summers may be the first baseball star who is remembered primarily for a thrilling walk to first base. His historic feat was not a milestone on thediamond, but rather a triumph of biomedical engineering and pure tenacity.
Five years ago, Summers was an up-and-coming pitcher on the nation's top-ranked college team, the Oregon State Beavers,when a freak traffic accident left him paralyzed below the chest. Today, Summers is making headlines as the first paraplegic to do what was heretofore unthinkable—stand up and take steps on his ownpower. His story, and that of the big-league team of bioengineers, physicians, surgeons, and physical therapists who helped him, will go down in the books for giving the spinal cord injury community realreasons to hope for a practical cure.
Getting to First Base
After the accident, Summers' determination to regain the use of his legs helped him withstand hours of grueling but ultimately fruitlessphysical training. Then he learned of an exciting new clinical study of a technology originally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat chronic back pain: epidural spinal stimulation.The researchers and clinicians leading the study were from top-flight institutions such as California Institute of Technology, UCLA, and the University of Louisville. Their technique had shownearly success in restoring voluntary mobility in animal subjects, and they had been searching for the ideal human candidate who could help them translate their findings into clinical use. As a seasonedathlete determined to regain the use of his legs by any means, Summers fit the bill perfectly for this rigorous, multiyear study.
His journey to first base began when surgeons implanted a sheet of 16electrodes on his lower spine, connected by subcutaneous wires to a receiver placed just below the hip. An external control device is used to send wireless signals to the receiver, which sends...