Q: I am 25 years old paraplegic patient, walking with K.A.F.O. calipers for more than 3-4 hours. Is it going to help me recover considering my injury is complete and there is no spasticity. I have flaccidity in both the lower limbs. Please help.

A:From your letter the cause of your paraplegia is not clear. Is it following an injury or is it due to some other cause? This is important as in some diseases there could be slow recovery, whereas if there is complete damage of cord due to injury it will never recover. The K.A.F.O. that you are using is only to provide support for your paralysed limb. It will not help recovery of muscle power. Flaccidity or spasticity depends on the level of injury. Internationally there is a large number of centres doing work on paraplegia and quadriplegia. You could easily go to their websites and get to know their programmes. It is difficult for me to summarise it here. One of the earliest centres in the world that worked for care of paraplegics is a Stoke Mandeville centre for paraplegics in the UK. There are standard protocols for this that can be procured from various agencies.