Rusk Rehabilitation Brooklyn at Augustana Family Health Center

Rusk Rehabilitation Brooklyn at Augustana Family Health Center, operated through Family Health Centers at NYU Langone, provides specialized outpatient rehabilitation services and support. Our team includes physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists.

Cardiac Rehabilitation

Our cardiac rehabilitation program helps patients recover from heart conditions, including heart attack, irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia); congestive heart failure; heart muscle conditions, such as cardiomyopathy; and peripheral vascular disease.

We also care for people who have had surgical procedures, including the following:

• coronary angioplasty and stenting
• coronary artery bypass surgery
• pacemaker or defibrillator placement
• cardiac valve repair or replacement
• left ventricular assist device surgery
• heart transplant.

Our cardiac rehabilitation program includes physician-monitored exercise, education about heart health, and specialized monitoring for people with diabetes. We aim to improve your strength, endurance, and overall well-being and reduce heart disease symptoms, such as shortness of breath and fatigue. We also work to lower heart risk factors, including blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels; optimize your weight; support healthier behaviors, such as quitting smoking; manage stress; and improve your emotional and mental health and well-being.

Pulmonary Rehabilitation

After lung surgery or hospitalization for a lung-related problem, you may benefit from pulmonary rehabilitation. We offer rehabilitation for these and other conditions:

• asthma
• bronchiectasis
• cystic fibrosis
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including chronic bronchitis and emphysema
• lung muscle weakness involving the diaphragm or chest wall muscle
• pneumonia
• recovery from lung surgery, including removal of part of a partial or complete lung
• restrictive lung disease, including pulmonary fibrosis
• pulmonary sarcoidosis
• spine or chest wall deformity
• scoliosis and kyphosis

Physical Therapy for Medically Complex Rehabilitation

Our medically complex rehabilitation program provides comprehensive care for people recovering from serious injuries, illnesses, surgeries, or chronic medical conditions that require advanced rehabilitation and ongoing medical management.

As part of this effort, our physical therapists develop personalized treatment plans focused on improving strength, endurance, mobility, independence, and overall quality of life.

Speech Pathology Specialty Rehabilitation 

The center’s advanced speech-language pathology (SLP) rehabilitation program provides specialized evaluation and treatment for individuals experiencing communication, cognitive, voice, or swallowing disorders resulting from conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, or Parkingson’s disease, as well as other illness or developmental challenges.

The individualized, evidence-based therapy our speech-language pathologists deliver is designed to improve speech clarity, language skills, memory, problem-solving, swallowing safety, and overall communication abilities.

Rehabilitation From Cancer

Our cancer rehabilitation services are designed to support your well-being during all stages of treatment, recovery, and long-term survivorship. The experts at Rusk Rehabilitation offer individualized rehabilitation plans that aim to ease side effects of cancer treatment, restore physical function, help relieve physical and emotional stress, and improve quality of life.

Rehabilitation can help address common side effects of cancer treatment, including fatigue, weakness, joint pain, swallowing problems, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, radiation fibrosis, lymphedema, incontinence, and postmastectomy pain syndrome.

Rehabilitation From Head and Neck Cancer

Specialists at our Head and Neck Center offer rehabilitative support during and after treatment. Speech and swallowing rehabilitation, occupational and physical therapy, and other services are available to help people with tumors of the head and neck or thyroid.

Lymphedema Rehabilitation 

Your doctor may refer you to our experts for a physical or occupational therapy evaluation and treatment for lymphedema, which is when lymph fluid builds up in tissues. A certified lymphedema therapist evaluates the affected area, creates a treatment plan to help reduce swelling, and educates you on how you can manage the condition yourself.

The goals of therapy are to ease discomfort by reducing swelling, restore function in the affected limbs, and prevent infection. Our experts may recommend complete decongestive therapy, a combination of approaches that is often considered the gold standard of treatment for the condition.

Vestibular Rehabilitation

Vertigo is a condition that makes you feel as if you are spinning, tilting, or disoriented, even when you aren’t moving. Some vertigo is peripheral, meaning it comes from the vestibular system, which includes the innermost part of your ear and the areas nearby that control balance and spatial awareness. To help treat peripheral vertigo, our physical therapists offer vestibular rehabilitation.

First, hearing, sensory, and imaging tests are performed, and based on the results of those tests, a therapist creates a rehabilitation plan. Our specialists use physical movements to enhance the body’s natural ability to respond to dizziness.

Our goal is to help you stop feeling dizzy in response to movements triggering vertigo. Your therapist may recommend balance retraining, an exercise regimen that improves the coordination of muscles, joints, and vision to help you feel steadier. They might also recommend gaze stabilization exercises, which use specific eye movements to help eye muscles adapt to changes in the vestibular system.

Testing Services

We also provide the following testing services for adults and children:

• modified barium swallow study (MBS) to determine if food or liquid has entered the lungs
• fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) study to evaluate swallowing ability
• stroboscopy, to examine the vocal cords and voice function to determine how well the larynx and airway are working 

Learn more about Rusk Rehabilitation.