"The Arms of Nildo and Rony:" a NeuroMat story

A professional motorcyclist and a surgeon meet up at the waiting room of a physiotherapy clinic. They share a common story: rehabilitation after a traumatic brachial plexus injury. Their fate is somehow similar to the one of a famous soccer player who, after a serious lesion, must attend therapy sections to learn again how to play, after a period of recovery. These stories are the guiding narratives of a newly released educational material for patients, caregivers and health professionals, the illustrated magazine "The Arms of Nildo and Rony."

The magazine was made in the context of the ABRAÇO initiative, the NeuroMat Action on the Brachial Plexus Injury. The script is an original idea of NeuroMat's director, Antonio Galves; illustrations were produced by artist João S. Magara. The document will be distributed in rehabilitation clinics and is also available for download and reading on the ABRAÇO website: abraco.numec.prp.usp.br. The initiative on the brachial plexus injury is supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), and the Research Center in Neurosciences and Rehabilitation from the Deolindo Couto Neurology Institute at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is a partner.

A flip-page version of the ABRAÇO can be seen here. A PDF version can be downloaded here.

The two main characters, the motorcyclist Nildo and the surgeon Rony, were based on actual patients with brachial plexus injuries. Their different background is no limit, so the magazine goes, for them to discuss and learn from each other on their health condition. The active role of patients in setting up a recovery strategy and getting quality information for their treatment is seen as an essential step in rehabilitation, according to NeuroMat PI and head of the ABRAÇO initiative Claudia D. Vargas in a previous NeuroMat newsletter issue.

This magazine is part of an ongoing strategy to provide educational resources to the network ABRAÇO has fostered, bringing together scientists, health professionals, caregivers and patients. These resources are mostly fourfold: booklets, event calendar, videos and what has been called "ABRAÇO Acadêmico". The latter is the transposition of scientific articles onto more widely accessible reports, in which the context and relevance of findings are explicitly made. The ABRAÇO website has also been translated into English as part of its dissemination strategy.

This piece is part of NeuroMat's Newsletter #49. Read more here

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Podcast A Matemática do Cérebro
Podcast A Matemática do Cérebro
NeuroMat Brachial Plexus Injury Initiative
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Neuroscience Experiments System
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NeuroMat Parkinson Network
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NeuroMat's scientific-dissemination blog
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