Reeve speaks after rare op

PARALYSED actor-director Christopher Reeve last night spoke publicly for the first time without the use of a mechanical ventilator, thanks to a “lung pacemaker” operation performed in February.

The Superman actor was paralysed from the neck down in a horseback riding accident in 1995.

Relying on electrode implants to breathe normally and foregoing a ventilator for up to 18 hours a day, the Superman star lobbied for spinal cord research in a taped interview with Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20.

When asked by Ms Walters if he ever thought he would be off the ventilator, Mr 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," Mr Reeve said in the interview.

"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.

Mr 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?" Ms Walters asked Mr Reeve. "I still think I will," he replies.

Mr Reeve has been able to breathe through his mouth and nose for the first time in eight years for longer and longer periods of time, relying only on an implant powered by an external battery. He has since emerged as a advocate for medical research.

"I feel I'm doing my part by taking reasonable risk in undergoing a somewhat risky experimental procedure," said Mr Reeve. He still requires nursing "around the clock". "They cover me like the Secret Service," Mr Reeve says.

"There's a huge benefit to getting off the ventilator," says surgeon Raymond Onders of the University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University. He implanted the diaphragm-pacing device into Reeve and four other patients using a less-invasive surgical technique. Two of those four patients breathe without a ventilator.

Previously, lung pacemakers were implanted into fragile lung nerves, instead of muscle, in an arduous procedure.

Mr Onders says he has 96 patients on a waiting list for the device, but has exhausted research funding to build more of them. Even with federal approval, the device would help fewer than 200 paralysed patients a year.

Similar implants have allowed paralysed patients to slightly move their arms or fingers and hold promise of someday helping people recover lost bladder and other functions.

Before and after the surgery, Mr Reeve conditioned his diaphragm muscle by electrical stimulation.