Inside United Cerebral Palsy of Central Arizona in Phoenix, physical therapist Atalie Holem preps seven-year-old Alexandra Anderson to work with the clinic's newest robot. "It allows us to practice balance and walking with the support of a dynamic trolley," Holem says — and for Alexandra, it's giving her the best chance of one day walking on her own.
At 15 months old, Alexandra was diagnosed with Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, a single missing gene on her eighteenth chromosome. She is nonverbal and faces a wide range of physical limitations, and she has never taken an independent first step. Once she's hooked into the harness, though, she can put her walking muscles to work: the ZeroG rides an overhead track, moves with her, and provides exactly as much support as she needs while quietly logging her body-weight support, the falls it prevents, and the distance she covers — all of it progress her team can document.
After a half-hour session, the harness comes off — and Alexandra, her brain and body still firing on memory, takes assisted steps holding Atalie's hand.
"Getting to see her make those steps in the gait trainer, and then when it's off of her, being able to take those assisted steps just holding Atalie's hand — I mean, that is just pure magic."Nicole — Alexandra's mom
The system is the only one of its kind in the Southwest, made possible by a $300,000 investment from donors including the Arizona Diamondbacks Foundation, the Arizona Board of Visitors, and Thunderbird Charities. And the hope it carries is backed by evidence: research shows children who receive robotic gait training alongside conventional physical therapy have a higher chance of gaining independent mobility than those who receive conventional therapy alone.