Watch the video version here. Alyssa Portelli, physical therapist at the University of Michigan, discuss the improvements she has seen using the NewGait on neuro patients
ALYSSA: I’m Alyssa Portelli. I’m a physical therapist at the University of Michigan and I primarily work with a neurological population.
ALYSSA: So, with the neurological population, we’ve done a lot of postural corrections, core stability, we have used it a lot with the ataxia patients, and then a lot of gait training. All of our patients really like it. Even family members have noted, “Oh, they’re walking so much better, they can clear their foot now!”
KIM: I would like to add to that, you know, Cathy’s journey with chronic pain has been very interesting. In the 1990s we were asked to get involved with developing a chronic pain program for our region. Cathy took it to a totally different level and actually in the last couple of years, she has developed a long-term philosophy on how to treat chronic pain that all of us have now adopted and are using in our clinics. I think of a patient this fall who came back and she said, “This has changed my life. I want you to know how much you’ve changed my life by the way that you’ve approached my pain.” So I want to give a whole lot of credibility to what Cathy is saying and she has changed the way we are treating chronic pain across the upper peninsula of Michigan.
ALYSSA: Yeah, a lot of our patients come in with a brace or AFO, and they like using the NewGait a lot better. They feel like the muscles are working in the NewGait, opposed to just the brace holding them there. So, in terms of outcome measures, we’ve seen improvements in gait speed, functional lower extremity strength, and even overall endurance, which is really cool to see!
ALYSSA: I would say that it’s a great piece of equipment, it’s a good adjunct to anything you’re doing. Once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy to put on and you can do your whole treatment or anything you had planned before, but with the NewGait on. It helps give that patient a little bit more of those normal patterns, the postural correction to train, I think it’s great. I think everyone should get one, all of our patients really liked it and we’ve had really good success with it.
Alyssa Portelli is a physical therapist at the University of Michigan. She is specialized in neurologic rehabilitation and immediately believed the NewGait would make a difference in her practice. We had a chance to check in with Alyssa to see how things were going.
