Supine Stander Demo

Lori Potts, PT demonstrates the features of the Supine Stander and discusses methods for promoting effective standing.

Watch Lori demonstrate the Mobile Stander and Prone Stander.

Video Transcript

This is Rifton’s Supine Stander. This is one is the Small. We also offer a Large Supine Stander.

You’ll notice that the movement from horizontal to vertical is gradual and with our Large Supine Stander you actually have some height elevation in the horizontal position to enable better ease of transfer. But, you can imagine this stander being appropriate for a medically fragile child; perhaps spinal cord injury on a ventilator where you need to move slowly from supine to vertical without the risk of orthostatic hypertension. Remember, many of these medically fragile children have low bone mineral density. You’ll want to position carefully to avoid risk of fracture.

So, we have great accessory support; head, trunk, knee and sandals. On the small Supine Stander the slots are horizontal, so you’ll want to think about your positioning for your trunk. On the large Supine stander they are vertical, allowing for more infinite positioning and the possibility of putting a lateral on the same level as the strap. We do offer a lateral. It is a more oval shape and it has a single knob which can be used as trunk support as needed with a small Supine Stander.

You will notice that the knee supports are velcro, so they can be moved up and down as needed in these slots. Think about positioning it either above the knee or below the knee, and your considerations might be the amount of contracture, the amount of vertical positioning of the board, because the purpose will be perhaps to add a little stretch for range of motion or adding some support at the knee for weight-bearing assist. Probably you want to avoid placing it directly over the kneecap because of that compression between the patella and the femur, but there again use your clinical judgement in each case. There’s a lot of factors involved.

Now we’ll take a closer look at the sandals. The sandals are actually placed on a base and this base can be moved forward, back, in and out, and even some rotation. Clearly, what we want to find here is a means of promoting weight bearing for bone mineral density and that is going to be about careful positioning of your accessories to make sure that the weight is coming through the foot to the sandal. Some clinicians actually like to attempt to just move that foot slightly and if it moves very easily that’s an indication that they’re not doing a whole lot of weight-bearing through the foot.

These straps you can attach across, if preferred, to assure that the foot is held in place and we do also have wedges which can be secured right under the sandal itself. These have an angle either to accommodate plantarflexion or to accommodate a little more dorsiflexion to add to that stretch at the foot and just make sure that the latches are in place.

We have some further options for leg separation. These include a simple abductor which is placed in the central slot. Also, a round abductor with the knob offset so that you can simply and easily rotate that to get just the precise position you’re looking for as well as moving it up and down and it has an optional collar to add diameter.

So, one consideration with the tray for the Supine Stander is that you’ll want the arm rests to be equidistant from the top of the bar to the knob on both sides and you might even want to make a little black marker notation for a particular student if that’s important in a given case. Then to place the tray on you’ll simply pull out the latch and secure it into the holes on the side. And then once the tray is in place you can then do further adjustments with this lower knob to modify your angle as needed depending on the position of the board of the Supine Stander.

For a smaller child or a child who no longer needs the head support, it is possible to simply adjust this bar and drop that out of the way and then raise the footboard up and you’ll notice immediately that we are now accommodating for a much smaller child.  And these same round laterals can now become head supports if needed or be used for the trunk or even between the legs as indicated.