Implant helps Christopher Reeve breathe

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 15 Nov 2003 - 0:00 PDT

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Christopher Reeve says a device implanted into his chest now allows him to breathe without a ventilator for hours at a time.

The 'Superman' actor, paralyzed from the neck down in a horseback riding accident in 1995, demonstrates the device, which acts like a pacemaker, during an interview with Barbara Walters for ABC's '20/20.'

When asked by Walters if he ever thought he would be off the ventilator, Reeve says, 'I was hoping for years.'

'It gives me now, a sense of one more piece of the puzzle being solved ... because a spinal cord injury affects every system in the body: bladder, bowels, sexual function, everything,' Reeve said in a portion of the interview posted on the ABC News Web site.

'So the more and more that you can get some systems back ... like the ability to breathe as normal ... just makes you feel that you're moving forward,' he said.

Reeve became the third person in the United States to undergo the procedure, called diaphragm pacing via laparoscopy, at the University Hospitals of Cleveland on February 28.

The surgery involves threading tiny wires through small incisions in the diaphragm. The wires connect the electrodes to a control box worn outside the body.

'Do you think you will walk again?' Walters asks Reeve. 'I still think I will,' he replies. 'I'm not sure when it's going to happen.'

The interview was scheduled to air Friday at 10 p.m.

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