Vivistim (implant for stroke rehabilitation)

2021: Implant announcement for post-stroke rehabilitation

At the end of September 2021, an implant for rehabilitation after a stroke entered the market. We are talking about a medically free rehabilitation system MicroTransponder Vivistim, which helps treat motor deficits of the upper limbs by stimulating the vagus nerve.

By gently exposing the vagus nerve to electric current, Vivistim can reduce motor function deficiencies of the limbs, especially the upper limbs. The implantable technology is coupled software ON with (a) physician and a wireless transmitter. With Vivistim software, physicians can manage patient rehabilitation, fine-tune implantable pulse generator parameters with a transmitter, and cross-correlate the entire stimulation history with current readings.

Vivistim (implant for stroke rehabilitation)

The product evaluation process from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), involved a clinical trial of 108 patients in 19 clinical centers in the US and UK. Tangible progress was considered to be an overall improvement in motor functions over baseline for six weeks. After all, every time the vagus nerve is stimulated, it sends a signal to the brain that triggers the release of neurotransmitters throughout the brain, including the motor cortex, which allows neuroplasticity to increase motor function.

Patients had to perform more than 300 physiotherapeutic exercises for 90 minutes per day, three times a week. The control group was exposed to limited vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) at baseline, while treatment group patients received the recommended dose. Treatment group patients had twice as much improvement as control group patients. Just under half of patients in the treatment group received an improvement of 6 or more on the Fugle-Meyer scale (FMA-UE), as of September 2021, it is a world-famous tool for assessing the degree of post-stroke disorders.^[1]

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