Las Vegas Health Facility Installs Poker Machine For Parkinson’s Patients

• Rich Caesar
• May 17, 2017

A health facility in Las Vegas has made big news all over in the mainstream media and online for installing a video poker machine in their premises.

HealthSouth Rehabilitation Center is the new home of the advanced video poker machine. However, it will not operate like a typical casino where you can check in whenever you want or at least on the weekend to place a bet on your favorite sport.

According to HealthSouth Hospital management, the new poker machine was installed inside the facility not to operate a casino for the staff and employees but to help motor-neuron patients.

However, many local and international journals when addressing the issue they said that you can now find poker machines everywhere in Vegas including hospitals.

When speaking to Fox News, early this week, a speech pathologist attached to the hospital, Sarah Tempest said that there are two poker machines installed in the hospital for purposes different from entertainment and money generating.

Sarah confirmed that the two machines would immensely help patients who are currently suffering from motor-neuron complications such as Parkinson’s disease to continue with their conventional therapy.

“The fact is that gambling tends to stimulate the prefrontal cortex, a critical part of the human brain that is likely to be damaged when stimulated and may lead to traumatic brain injury,” Sarah said.

When speaking to Fox News, mostly, Ms. Tempest agreed that exposure to too much gambling might lead to some plunging into brain damage.

Tempest added that it is important for other medical facilities to emulate, “By bringing the machines inside our premises we are trying to help improve the poker games, executive –functioning skills of those players or patients who for now are unable to focus properly. We will finally achieve to better their brain condition because we focus on mental flexibility, attention, working memory, and self-regulation.”

Unique Yet Ingenious Solution

While many people are commenting HealthSouth Hospital for their ingenious solution to help motor-neuron patients, a section of health stakeholders hold a different expert opinion. Roulette Makes A Massive Comeback In Las Vegas Casinos.

Most people agree that video poker experience as sedentary. They may assist in the improvement of prefrontal cortex lobes leading to the ability of the brain to initiate coherent movements; there is the reason to be cautious about the move of exposing such kind of patients to ‘more’ video poker experience.

Such a stakeholder who opposes the move by HealthSouth Hospital to install video machines in their premises is Dr. Keith Ablow, who coincidentally is a Fox News contributor.

Dr. Ablow asserts that although something interactive will work as a conventional therapy for the patients, video poker is not the best alternative. Ablow’s concern is that exposure to more video games may lead to gambling addiction.

“I feel that if clinicians have decided to pursue this ‘gaming’ path, it would be prudent for them to inform their patients because there is a likelihood of causing impulse control complications,” Dr. Ablow said.