Comprehensive rehabilitation care [Music playing] [Text on screen: Ohio State Health & Discovery Health Talks] Gail Hogan: Welcome to Health Talks. I'm Gail Hogan. Ohio State is nationally recognized and ranked for exceptional inpatient rehabilitative services found in Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital. Dr. Whitney Luke is here to tell us about the expertise there. Thank you for joining me, Dr. Luke. Whitney Luke, MD: Thanks for having me. [Text on screen: Gail Hogan Host Health Talks] Gail Hogan: A rehabilitation hospital has all kinds of services to folks in need. What do you offer? [Music fades] [Text on screen: Whitney Luke, MD Clinical Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Ohio State Wexner Medical Center] Whitney Luke, MD: So we offer comprehensive rehabilitation care to patients that have had a catastrophic injury such as a stroke, spinal cord injury, or a traumatic brain injury. Often those patients come to us not only from Ohio State's Hospital, but other hospitals within the Central Ohio region, as well as regionally throughout the Midwest. Gail Hogan: So you mentioned folks come to you maybe after a traumatic accident or an illness or some disease that leads them in need of some rehabilitative services. Can you give me examples of what sort of services you offer these folks? Whitney Luke, MD: Sure. So as a rehabilitation physician, we really focus on functional outcomes or functional restoration. So for somebody who has had a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, the services we offer usually is some kind of therapeutic service. So physical therapy, occupational therapy or speech therapy. Our goal is often to either relearn how to walk or work on speech or something that has happened after they've had some devastating injury. Gail Hogan: But what about someone who's lost a limb? Do you take care of that as well? Whitney Luke, MD: Yes, we do have amputative care. So we often see a lot of patients that have had a traumatic amputation of a limb or have may lost a limb due to a cancer state. Gail Hogan: Tell us about the state-of-the-art treatments and how you personalize those for every patient. [Text on screen: Whitney Luke, MD Clinical Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Ohio State Wexner Medical Center] Whitney Luke, MD: Sure. Each patient is different based on what kind of injury has led them to our hospital. So we personalize their rehabilitation services and their journey with us based on that. So patients will stay sometimes a shorter length of stay or longer length of stay based on the needs that they have. All of their rehab care is personalized to them. So some patients may have physical therapy and occupational therapy only, or some may have all three therapies. We have state-of-the-art services including exoskeleton treatment, working on gait. We also do community outings. So re-entry outings is what we call them. Just things like going to the bank or the grocery store to really work with the patients, to re-entry them to the community, things they might do in their regular daily life. [Text on screen: Gail Hogan Host Health Talks] Gail Hogan: That is something I hadn't thought about, going out after you've been in a rehabilitation setting and learning how to do it there, opposed to going out in the public. So your goal is so that everyone can go home. Right? Whitney Luke, MD: The goal of acute inpatient rehab is to return home, and sometimes that looks different for everyone else, or every person, may look different for them. So if you've lost a limb, learning how to re-walk, transfer, dress and bathe with a prosthetic or even without a prosthetic may look different than someone who's had a spinal cord injury who may be learning to use a wheelchair and learning different ways to use a mobility device. Gail Hogan: This is called a comprehensive rehabilitation program, that we're comprehensive. What does that mean for these people and for Dodd? Whitney Luke, MD: Sure. So for our patients and just for us at Dodd, what we really focus on is comprehensive care. So not only our therapy services, but we also focus on psychological services, learning how to really cope with something maybe that has led us to a different outcome than we ever expected for our future. In addition to those therapy services, we do have hospital medicine who can help maximize patients' medical treatments. We have psychologists who work with our patients as well with our team to really make sure our patients are ready to go home. And not only comprehensive for the patient, but also for the family. Really working with the families to make sure that they are ready to take care of their loved one at home, that they have the equipment that they need, the mobility devices, and then they know what the next steps are going to be after they leave our hospital. Gail Hogan: It's interesting that you talk about that mental part because yes, you can do a lot physically, but someone who has survived, how do you then get them to accept the fact that their life is changed? Whitney Luke, MD: So that may be one of the hardest pieces of rehab. The physical piece is sometimes the easiest to overcome, but learning how to cope with an injury that has happened to them is most often the most difficult. So our psychologists are a key piece of the therapy and the treatment that we offer at Dodd. Not only do they work with the patients, but like I said, with the family members to make sure that they're ready to go home, and then we can continue that care after they discharge home and they often will continue their therapies after that as an outpatient. Gail Hogan: I'm sure you've seen successes and you have to cheer when you do. What is one of the most memorable success stories that you could share with us? Whitney Luke, MD: So I think we have quite a few. A couple. We are the only Disorders of Consciousness program through our Traumatic Brain Injury program. Gail Hogan: What's it called? Whitney Luke, MD: It's called Disorders of Consciousness, and these are patients that have had a traumatic brain injury that often are very low level of consciousness and the families really wanting to work on waking them up with the goal of going home. So sometimes these patients have been in a skilled nursing facility or a long-term care facility and they come to us, and then we're able to really work with them to increase their level of consciousness, their participation in daily life. And most of those patients are then able to go home with their family and they could have been sitting in a nursing home or a nursing facility for multiple months or even a year. And to me, that is one of our key programs that we offer and key successes that we've seen in the last few years. Gail Hogan: That would have to be wonderful to see someone become all of a sudden aware who was not before. Whitney Luke, MD: Exactly. And that is the key piece. They awaken. They're able to work on these other therapy services with the ultimate goal of going home. [Text on screen: Gail Hogan Host Health Talks] Gail Hogan: You, in Ohio, the brain injury rehabilitation team plays a pivotal role in research. So how does that work? [Text on screen: Whitney Luke, MD Clinical Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Ohio State Wexner Medical Center] Whitney Luke, MD: So our research team is one of the longest running research teams, I think for traumatic brain injury in the United States. Our TBI model systems, we are the longest running university system that has been involved in that since going back all the way to 1997. And our team looks a lot at functional outcomes, including our model systems. One of our most recent research awards that we received was an almost $17 million grant called Care for TBI. They are looking at functional outcomes from traumatic brain injury, inpatient rehab programs, but using that data to really identify, is there specific rehab treatments that are best for each individual? Gail Hogan: We're coming up on 60 years that Dodd Rehabilitation has been around. A lot's happened in 60 years, not just here at Ohio State, but around the country. What about the role that Ohio State has played in rehabilitation services in those 60 years? Whitney Luke, MD: So when Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital opened up in the 1960s, my mentor, Dr. Ernie Johnson, was pivotal here at Ohio State to build that building, which we have been in for the last 60 years. And just looking, I think, forward to the future of what rehab holds, it's really a beacon of hope for patients that have had a devastating injury, and really looking to the future. What new treatment options can we afford patients? What can we find? And research and clinical treatment is the key to that success for us here at OSU. Gail Hogan: So you see moving forward, even more ways to help folks who have been injured by disease or stroke or trauma of some sort? [Music playing] Whitney Luke, MD: Here at Ohio State, one of our biggest programs, our service lines is working with our patients that have cancer disease states. That's one of our largest service lines, and really partnering with the James Cancer Hospital here to provide rehab services to those patients. And really, in the future, what our goal is, is looking forward to building a new hospital, which will expand our bed capacity, which allows us to take care of more patients than we currently do now. Gail Hogan: Great work, Dr. Luke. Thank you for joining me. Whitney Luke, MD: Thank you for having me. Gail Hogan: And thank you for joining us for Health Talks. [Text on screen: Ohio State Health & Discovery Health Talks health.osu.edu] [Music fades]