An ongoing study at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine is determining how Fitbits can help predict recovery times for patients who have undergone spine surgery.
Patients scheduled for spine surgery will wear a Fitbit for the four weeks prior to surgery and the six months following a surgery. The wearable will capture individual data on steps and activity levels.
Currently, the study is focused on patients undergoing minimally invasive spine surgeries for degenerative disease and deformities, but researchers hope to eventually expand the monitoring approach to all spine operations.
"An activity monitor allows us to have an objective, numerically exact and continuous measure of activity," said Zachary Smith, MD, assistant professor in neurological surgery and principal investigator of the study. "This can show exactly how much function a patient has regained and, critically, when and if it occurs during the recovery period."
Preliminary data indicates patients go through a four- to six-week period where activity is decreased. Approximately four weeks after many surgeries, patients are back to pre-operative activity levels, and their activity levels slowly grow to exceed those of pre-surgery.
"We hope to integrate this into our practice so that it becomes a universal and accepted means of evaluating patients and evaluating our outcomes," Dr. Smith said. "Most importantly, we hope to make patients more involved in their own self-evaluation, recovery and spinal health."
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