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April 2004

Power Soccer is now an official sport of the National Disability Sports Alliance.
© 2004 Scot Goodman
scotgoodmanphoto.com

NDSA Names New Sport to Official Roster
Power Soccer—the first competitive team sport designed and developed especially for power wheelchair users—is now an official sport on the National Disability Sports Alliance (NDSA) roster.

Played by people who have quadriplegia, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, head trauma, and stroke, the game involves two teams of four power chair users who attack, defend, and maneuver an oversized soccer ball to score points on a goal. The skill of the wheelchair user, as well as the speed and power of the chair, determine a team’s success. Each team includes both male and female athletes.

Power Soccer competition is separated into A and B Divisions, in which the A Division features more aggressive competition, while athletes with a lesser amount of wheelchair control play in the B Division.

As an official sport on the NDSA roster, Power Soccer will receive financial support and insurance coverage for the annual Power Soccer national/international tournament. In addition, NDSA will market the sport as it does with the other sports on its roster, assist teams in fund-raising activities, and look for corporate sponsors for the game.

“We are excited about Power Soccer becoming a part of the NDSA,” said Jerry McCole, executive director of the NDSA. “This great sport, played by athletes in power wheelchairs, is growing, just as the NDSA is growing, so this new alliance comes at a perfect time for the sport and the NDSA. We are committed to making sure sports opportunities are there for everyone with a physical disability.”

Power Soccer was developed more than 20 years ago and is currently played by approximately 300 people in the United States, Canada, Denmark, England, France, and Japan. The 2004 Power Soccer World Invitational will be held in Indianapolis on June 4-6.

Other official NDSA sports include boccia, bowling, cycling, equestrian, indoor manual and power wheelchair soccer, powerlifting, ambulatory soccer, swimming, and track and field.

Modified Constraint-Induced Therapy Proves Effective
Stroke victims suffering from upper-limb hemiparesis may learn to develop long-term functionality of their paralyzed arm through modified constraint-induced movement therapy (mCIMT), say authors of a new study published in the January 2004 issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Designed to be practiced by patients 3 to 9 months after suffering a stroke, the mCIMT method involves two components: First, patients must attend half-hour therapy sessions three times per week for 10 weeks in which they are required to practice techniques with their stroke-affected arm(s). Second, patients must practice at home for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, during the 10-week session, and are required to use their affected arms for all activities at home.

For the study, 17 patients, who experienced a stroke more than 1 year before participating in the study, were divided into three groups: a group that received mCIMT, a group that received traditional rehabilitation, and a control group. Patients in the mCIMT group had half-hour sessions of physical therapy and occupational therapy three times a week for 10 weeks. The occupational therapy concentrated on affected limb use in functional tasks, while the physical therapy sessions concentrated largely on lower-limb activities. Preliminary results of the study showed that mCIMT helped return motor function in patients’ affected arms after as many as 6 years post-stroke.

“This is a significant discovery that will help stroke victims return to productive, viable lifestyles,” said Stephen Page, PhD, researcher and director of Drake Center’s Neuromotor Recovery and Rehabilitation Laboratory, Cincinnati. “Many positive things are happening with these patients, the most impressive of which is that we are able to track a notable motor improvement in just a 10-week period. Very few therapies show long-term impacts on weakness or paralysis in the hand, so this latest procedure opens the proverbial therapy door.”

Study Finds Immediate Therapy Beneficial for Stroke Patients
In other stroke rehabilitation news, a study in the March 5 issue of Stroke concluded that stroke patients who receive stimulation therapy on their paralyzed arm soon after suffering from the stroke may see lasting improvements for at least 5 years.

Usually, an extended regimen of physical therapy is needed to restore nearly normal use of the affected arm or leg, but the recent study showed that the sooner the rehabilitation begins, the longer the positive effects are sustained by the body.

For the study, Belgian researchers randomly assigned 100 stroke patients to 30 minutes of sensorimotor stimulation of the affected arm every day for 6 weeks. They sat in a rocking chair with their affected arm held in place on the arm of the chair by a splint, forcing the patients to use their arm to rock the chair, thus causing muscle contractions in the shoulder. The other patients received phony treatment. After the 6 weeks, all the patients continued with standard rehabilitation.

Researchers were able to follow 62 patients for 5 years. They found that the sensorimotor therapy helped patients maintain the positive effects of therapy throughout this period. The results also showed that the patients who felt the greatest benefit over time were those who were most severely affected by their stroke.

“Bionic Bone” Effective as Prosthesis Treatment
Until recently, amputation was the only option for young patients suffering from rare osteosarcoma. Today, however, these patients face a new option known as the “bionic bone,” which is a noninvasive prosthesis that helps salvage limbs.

Featured in a February 2004 article in Mechanical Engineering, the bionic bone stretches and lengthens damaged legs and reduces rehabilitation time. With the bionic bone, there is no need for traditional surgery, where physicians lengthen prosthetics with a key inserted surgically into patients’ legs.

The new device enables disease-affected limbs to grow at the same rate as normal, unaffected legs by using an external source of energy to move a spring, which is embedded in soft leg tissue, to stretch the limb. Performed during short office visits, the process can lengthen the affected leg a quarter millimeter every minute, and can add up to 4 mm of painless incremental growth.

Devised by bioengineers at the University College London Center for Bioengineering, London, and orthopedic surgeons at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, England, the bionic bone was 11 years in the making. It is currently being used in the United States and England on young bone cancer patients.

Botox Used for Neck and Back Pain
Botulinum toxin type A, also known as Botox, has received a great deal of media attention due to its popularity as a treatment for cosmetic improvements of the skin. However, the results of a recent study show that Botox injections might also be effective in alleviating severe neck and back pain that other methods cannot relieve.

Published in the January 2004 issue of the American Journal of Pain Management, the study suggests that Botox may block certain pain-promoting proteins in the body; 25 patients whose chronic neck and upper back pain had lasted for 3 months despite treatment found that a single round of Botox injections, used in combination with physical therapy, brought pain relief within a month.

During the study, patients used a 10-point scale to rate their pain. Within 4 weeks of treatment, patients’ pain scores began to decline, and after 8 weeks, the scores dropped an average of approximately 40%. The ability of Botox to relax and lengthen muscles may make it easier for patients to improve with physical therapy, noted the study’s author.

Three out of the 25 patients who participated in this study reported treatment-related side effects, including soreness in the injection site, numbness in the neck and arm, and probable migraine.

Census Bureau Data on Disabled Population Challenged
The National Council on Disability called for changes in the way the Census Bureau collects information on Americans with disabilities, stating that a lack of good government data has deprived local officials, schools, and businesses of funding, according to a story reported on WashingtonPost.com (www.aapd-dc.org/docs/discriticized.html, accessed February 4, 2004).

The census data about people with disabilities is used to allocate billions in federal money to states so that adequate transportation, job training, and other services can be provided. The funds are also distributed to hospitals, schools, and outreach centers. Census data information is also used to forecast the number of people eligible for Social Security disability benefits.

A federal advisory panel criticized the profile data collected in the 2000 census, which found that 30.5 million people age 21 to 64 had a disability, and approximately 5.2 million people ages 5 to 20 had a disability. The advisory panel stated that the data did not include information on children younger than 6 years with disabilities, thus neglecting a separate survey in 1999, which stated that approximately 650,000 young children had a disability.

The National Council on Disability also criticized the Census Bureau for producing different rates in the population in two separate surveys collected in 2000, and for making only incremental improvements over the past three decades in the way census data is collected.

Kerry Launches Disabilities Section on Campaign Web Site

United States presidential hopeful John Kerry has developed a section on his Web site dedicated to his “Freedom, Independence, and Choices for Americans with Disabilities” platform. The page, www.johnkerry.com/issues/awd/, features a Web log in which people with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, and others can learn more about Kerry’s campaign and goals for disability issues.

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