A 33-year-old paraplegic patient is walking again thanks to a neurostimulator, four years after a severe spinal cord injury left his legs paralyzed. Andrea is the name of the protagonist of this one-of-a-kind clinical case, a fully Italian success story led by doctors, physical therapists, and researchers from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, together with bioengineers from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa.

Andrea had been left immobilized by a traumatic spinal cord injury at the lower thoracic level (T11-T12), extending to the conus medullaris—the terminal portion of the spinal cord. A workplace accident caused him a severe motor deficit due to damage to both the central and peripheral nervous systems.