CLEVELAND, Ohio — Philanthropist and arts patron Toby Devan Lewis is giving $625,000 over five years to the MetroHealth System to help patients overcome paralysis and improve their quality of life as they rehabilitate from traumatic injury.
The gift will support growth of functional electrical stimulation (FES), a technology that restores movement in paralyzed patients, and MetroHealth’s Artist-in-Residence Program, which uses art therapy to advance the healing process.
MetroHealth is a founding partner of the Cleveland FES Center, a consortium that includes Case Western Reserve University and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. The center is pioneering clinical use of electrical currents to cause paralyzed limbs to stand or grasp, activate body functions such as bladder control or breathing, create the feeling of touch, or stop pain or muscle spasms.
Electrical stimulation can also help paralyzed patients recover and relearn motor skills. Lewis’ gift will make FES and neurotechnology more accessible to patients with spinal cord injuries, MetroHealth said.
Many of these patients could go on to participate in other rehabilitative therapies at the MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio. The gift also will support a Toby Devan Lewis Scholars program at MetroHealth, which hires three research investigators dedicated to neurotechnology from the biomedical engineering department at Case Western Reserve.
Â
“Cleveland has led the nation in the use of this technology to restore movement in patients with stroke and spinal cord injury,” Dr. Brendan Patterson, chair of orthopedics at MetroHealth, said in a hospital release. “With Toby Lewis’ generosity, we can solidify that national leadership and bring the most brilliant minds to MetroHealth to help change the course of a patient’s life following traumatic injury.”
Lewis wants functional electrical stimulation to become better known in Cleveland and worldwide. “It’s not often that I can be a part of an incredible new field of medicine and watch my investment at work,” she said in the release. “I have been fortunate enough to witness a paralyzed woman swing a tennis racket. It’s a wonderful, hopeful feeling and this is just the beginning.”
Lewis’ gift includes $125,000 to support the Artist-in-Residence Program, which she helped establish at MetroHealth nearly five years ago. The program brings in artists to offer classes, such as painting or jewelry making, to patients to help their rehabilitation. Some patients say art therapy helped them cope with spending weeks or months in the hospital and recover from their disabilities.
