Doctor Mii at your service!

Amy Hoffman, a nursing researcher at Michigan University’s College Of Nursing, is getting a grant of $379,741.00 and a Nintendo Wii console to help lower the risk of fatigue her lung cancer patience suffer from, especially after surgery. NSCLC (Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer) is the most common lung cancer by about 85% and icauses life threatening risks alone, but even the treatments can also cause high risks. So Hoffman’s been looking for a solution as she mentioned “Nearly half of all Americans live with at least one chronic illness, and nearly a quarter of Americans having multiple chronic illnesses. The needs of the chronically ill are not being met, and a common challenge noted by patients with cancer is self-management of symptoms.”

So Hoffman hopes that the answer to these problems is the introduction of the Nintendo Wii to help rehabilitate lung cancer patients, especially when they are at home. She mostly uses Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus as the main device to help these patients because it allows the patients to do an exercise at their own pace but still be able to get a good and possible work out.

After a volunteer test she conducted with her patients, they responded positively about it. She goes on to state, “This is where my research team is making a difference, by transforming the current standard of care and providing an innovative, rehabilitative, home-based exercise intervention for postsurgical lung cancer patients. The virtual exercise intervention was found to be safe and highly acceptable, with patients stating they would recommend the program to others like themselves undergoing surgery for NSCLC.”

So far Hoffman’s results have been positive and the feed back has been positive as the fatigue that her patients have been suffering from before and after surgery has been decreasing. Hoffman then goes on to state that if this regiment passes the clinical trial then this kind rehabilitation can go on to help people that suffer from chronic illnesses that suffer similar symptoms such as NSCLC or doesn’t have any to little rehabilitation possibilities.

[Source]