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Spinal Cord Injury
Our goal is to help you achieve your best outcome with cutting-edge treatments. As the world’s #1 referral choice for spinal cord injury, you benefit from our integration of medicine, research and technology.
Innovations in neuroscience have led to outcomes once impossible for spinal cord injury patients.
Program, Services & Patients
You want to recover what’s most important in your life — be it mobility, independence or walking again. Together we reach for those goals.
SCI Recovery Program
See what sets us apart from other rehabilitation hospitals and why our outcomes for spinal cord injury patients are exceptional.
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SCI Specialty Services
Our wide array of services, many available only here at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, will help you and your family navigate your recovery.
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Brad's Story: Back on the Bike
Brad Baker is a leading flat track racer. On July 22, he sustained a SCI at Minneapolis X Games. His recovery at AbilityLab has brought him back to the bike.
read moreHow We Heal
Our integrated team of physicians, nurses, therapists, researchers and case managers understand the most complex injuries. They create programs for each patient – tailored to your individual goals. Therapy may take place in one or several ability labs.
Spinal Cord Innovation Center
The Center is staffed with skilled nurses and physicians with expertise in the functional recovery from SCI equipped to handle all levels, types and severity.
Learn MoreLegs + Walking Lab
The Margaret & Mark Stephan Legs + Walking Lab is designed for patients and research participants with diagnoses affecting lower-body function due to brain or spinal cord injury and diseases of the nerves, muscles and bones. Researchers and clinicians focus on advancing trunk, pelvic and leg function, movement, coordination, strength and balance.
Arms + Hands Lab
The two-story Harris Family Foundation Arms + Hands Lab is a robust environment designed for patients and research participants working on recovering and strengthening complex hand and reaching skills — turning a key, picking up a pen, reaching for a glass, putting on a sweater…all the many things we do with our hands, arms and fingers.
Strength + Endurance Lab
Designed for patients and research participants working on building stamina and resilience, the Nancy W. Knowles Strength + Endurance Lab is where therapy is targeted to improve complex motor and endurance activities, coordination and higher-level activities of daily living (cooking, dressing, gardening, sports).
Pediatric Lab
Pediatric patients (inpatient and outpatient) work with doctors, researchers and therapists in this kid-customized Grainger Pediatric Lab, scaled for smaller bodies, developing brains and appealing to young imaginations.
learn moreOur doctors, therapists and scientists are leaders in their fields. We bring together these experts with the most advanced medical research and technology to give you superior care and the greatest chance for your best outcome.
Science-Driven Care
With more than 350 clinical studies under way — several specifically dedicated to improving recovery from damage to the vertebrae and spinal cord — we offer you access to the world’s most advanced research, which can directly impact your recovery.
Assistive & Rehabilitation Robotics Lab
We incorporate robotics autonomy and intelligence into assistive machines to support people with motor impairments.
view labClinical Trials and Research Studies
Referenced Node
A Multi-Center Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Intermittent Hypoxia Therapy in Individuals with SCI
A study to investigate the effectiveness of daily acute intermittent hypoxia therapy (dAIH), coupled with a massed practice intervention or the use of high repetition training with the Rapael Glove, to improve upper-extremity function in individuals with chronic incomplete cervical SCI.
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