Restoring bladder and bowel control is very high on the list of priorities for people with spinal cord injury, second only to hand and arm function. Professor James Fawcett and his team at Cambridge University are developing a ‘biorobotic’ device that can read signals from the sensory nerves in the pelvis. These signals would stop the bladder emptying itself at embarrassing times, tell the patient how full the bladder is, and allow them to use the electronics to empty it.
Unlike the existing bladder emptying stimulators, the new device doesn’t require the severing of sensory nerves from the pelvis into the spinal cord eliminating the issues of weakened pelvic muscles and erectile dysfunction.