A Scanner to Help Handicapped Children More Effectively

«Warmth, outstretched hands which erase the differences"
Clothilde Bottino

At Saint-Fargeau, (some 40 kilometers south of Paris), the Centre de Rééducation Fonctionnelle (CRF) of the Ellen Poidatz Foundation was, in 1919, the first establishment to welcome children and adolescents in a handicapped situation. With a capacity of 60 beds in full hospitalization and 5 additional places for day hospitalization, this center provides care, psychomotor rehabilitation, and dispenses teaching adapted to the young patients aged from 18 months to 20 years.

For nearly 90 years, it has been receiving them for short stays (for cases of temporary motor handicaps) or sometimes very long ones. They are supervised by a densely staffed team of health and handicap professionals: doctors, nurses, assistant nurses, physiotherapists, ergotherapists, orthophonists, psychomotor specialists, etc. Besides, they also receive schooling commensurate with their capacities, in order to guarantee maximum independence through vocational integration.

Refining the Diagnosis

To further improve the care for the children affected with IMC (cerebral motor infirmities), orthopedic problems or neuromuscular diseases, the CRF de Saint-Fargeau has turned to the Veolia foundation to secure help in acquiring a "Vicon MX". This highly sophisticated instrument, equipped with eight cameras, will serve to make an extremely detailed analysis of the pathologies of the young patients. By breaking down their movements, it will help the care teams throughout the supervision of their patients: from preventive treatment to pre-operative reviews, and naturally including the fine-tuning and tracking of the appropriateness of the orthopedic equipment. This acquisition is particularly important because the movement analysis service of the CRF Ellen Poidatz is currently the only one in the l'Ile-de-France area for pediatric matters.