By Powell Cobb

Managing Editor

People in Bainbridge recovering from fall injuries, strokes or other injuries that incapacitate the use of their lower body no longer have to travel to Tallahassee to seek top of the line treatment.

Care 360 has a new tracking system harness that helps speed recovery up to 50 percent. The device straps around the injured person’s body and provides support as they relearn to use their legs.

“This harness allows us to do rehab on them without the risk of them hitting the floor,” said Landin Marzolf, the Care 360 chiropractor. “Basically it catches the patient, and we can do more aggressive rehab. We don’t have the patient’s mindset that they are going to fall, so they advance a lot farther under this system.”

Marzolf said this equipment has been absent in Bainbridge, so doctors have been referring patients to balance coordination centers in Tallahassee. More and more referrals are occurring since Care 360 installed the harness. It is being used every day, multiple times a day.

The harness holds up to 500 pounds and offers full support and mobility.

“It’s also safer for the therapist and safer for the patient, because if you have a 300-pound patient and a 150-pound therapist, and that patient goes to fall, that therapist is trained to catch them so you end up injuring your therapist, too,” Marzolf said.

The harness differs from parallel bars, a system of recovery where patients use metal bars to balance on while they relearn to put weight on their legs, because it is completely hands free.

“It takes months to get patients from going up and down the stairs using (the bars),” Marzolf said. “This literally cuts that time in half a lot of times, because you can get them doing more progressed rehab faster. It cuts their treatment time down, and of course the doctor likes to see that.”