Claudia Mitchell may look like your fair 20-something college student. She is anything but.
The "targeted reinnervation" surgery was developed by Dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. It was a radical idea: a robotic arm controlled not by a patient's stump or shoulder, but by a patient's thoughts.
Mitchell, a U.S. Marine, was ready to try anything to have a second operation arm. She volunteered for the surgery.
During the six-hour procedure in 2006, doctors took the severed and dormant nerves in Mitchell's shoulder, nerves that ar used to control the movement of her branch, and assign them under the muscle in her chest.
They treasured the nerves to reawaken and work her bureau muscle. The doctors eventually used the electrical cheek signals from that chest muscle to power a new bionic arm.
'We Have Rewired Her'
Now, when Mitchell wants to move her arm, she thinks "move." The signal travels from her wit to the muscle in her chest. According to Kuiken, Mitchell's chest muscle then contracts and "lets tiny bits of electricity out."
There ar tiny antennas built into the robotic arm, which pick up these electrical signals. The signals then go to an internal computer that decodes them and tells the artificial arm what to do. It's about instantaneous.
"We possess rewired her," Kuiken said.
For Mitchell, living with her new arm has meant constant discovery.
"I have what I call my 'eureka moments,'" Mitchell said. "My stupefied 'I can't believe I just did that' moments."
Now she can do the simple things that almost people take for given, like folding a shirt, slicing vegetables or fifty-fifty opening a wine bottle.
"There are a lot of daily tasks that the great unwashed don't fifty-fifty think around being able to do that I can [do] now," she said.
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