By manually twisting the screws on either end of the fixator, discrete pieces of bone are pulled apart to lengthen legs an average of 1.25 centimeters per day. The body regenerates bone, filling the gap in a matter of hours.
"You gradually stretch out the healing bone sort of like salt water taffy," Blanco says.
Once the desired length has been achieved, Blanco removes the fixator. Months of physical therapy follow. Patients going through any limb-lengthening procedure relearn how to bend their knees, rotate their ankles, walk and swim. If all goes well, the limbs are equal in length and the range of motion is average. Unlucky patients can suffer complications such as multiple fractures, scarring, an off-kilter gait and arthritis as well as hip knee and disc pain.
About 500 limb-lengthening surgeries are performed each year at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors there have partnered with Ellipse Technologies to promote the new internal limb-lengthening method. External fixators are invasive, and guarantee postoperative weight loss, inflammation, oozing pustules, and reduced mobility along with the above-mentioned problems. In the best cases a patient treated conventionally can expect to have at least two complications, such as Lindsay's fractured bone, says Debbie Stanitski, an emeritus professor at the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital.
Precice technology claims to be far less painful and much easier to manage than an external fixator. The newer mechanism relies on rare earth magnets made of an alloy of neodymium iron and boron as well as revolving screw gears to extend a fixator rod that is inserted inside the bone. Doctors direct the gearbox magnetically via a handheld controller, and manipulations occur entirely within the bone, thus minimizing the risk of infection because there are no open wounds. So far, Sinai Hospital has implanted the internal fixator in 31 patients and the initial results look promising. This approach has been much safer than external limb-lengthening methods, reducing the complication rate by 75 percent, says John Herzenberg, director of the International Center for Limb Lengthening at Sinai.
A tough decision
When the Ellingsworths elected to put Lindsay through limb-lengthening surgery, they were aware of the consequences. What they didn't bargain for was how agonizing it would be to watch their little girl suffer through the external fixation process.
Surgically lengthened limbs are never as strong as they were prior to treatment. In Lindsay's case her femur was unable to take the weight of her body and snapped as a result. In order to keep her bone from fracturing again, Lindsay needed the stability of the external fixator's metal frame, which had been removed prematurely. According to the doctor, one of her parents would have to reattach the frame to the screws in her leg—leftovers from an earlier surgery.
Using an Allen wrench, Ellingsworth cinched the fixator's steel bar to screws already deep within Lindsay's bone. For an hour the terrified father tinkered with the brace while Lindsay's mother held her close. Latch the wrench. Dry her tears. Twist the wrench. Listen to her screams. Repeat. When it was over, Ellingsworth embraced his child tightly and wished he could take some of the burden off her small shoulders. Lindsay was only eight years old, and this was just the first surgery with many to follow. Legs can only stretch about 12.7 centimeters at a time so patients must come in for multiple operations.
"They'll spend the rest of their life being lengthened," says Doreen DiPasquale, a reconstructive orthopedic surgeon at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, Calif. "That's not fair to the kid...It's a quality-of-life issue."
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10 Comments
Add CommentNew tech?? If 20 years old or older is 'new' I guess the article is correct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh ok, a magnetically driven internal fixator, I finished reading... neat!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagine her strength, resolve and toughness! One day this young lady will run a company or be an astronaut or be President of the United States or inventor or teacher or have some other amazing role.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdiscrete pieces of bone are pulled apart to lengthen legs an average of 1.25 centimeters per day. The body regenerates bone, filling the gap in a matter of hours.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes the author realise that is half an inch per day?
Legs can only stretch about 12.7 centimeters at a time so patients must come in for multiple operations.
Does the author realise that is over 5 inches?
Do these things get edited? This is supposed to be a science magazine.
Great education system you have in the USA. Not understanding the difference between metric & imperial measures led to a Mars spacecraft worth billions being lost a few years ago & no doubt many deaths each year through wrong prescriptions & the like.
My independent research on the lengthening process shows that it yields around a millimeter a day so I'm pretty sure the lengths described are incorrect. Carlyle is correct. This is what happens when we stick with an out dated system of measurements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously you did t research it enough bc Im 100% sure that my X-rays don't lie neither do my Drs. Out of 10 inches of being short, I gained 8 1/2 inches with two lengthenings that were both stretched over an 8month period within 3 yrs of each other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know this lady personally and she is the most amazing girl that you will ever meet. She has the biggest heart and the most loyalty that you could ever ask in a person. She never lets anything get her down. She keeps fighting till she wins. I am very proud to say that I know her and she is a friend of mine. You couldnt ask for a better person.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLindsay, please can I get to know more about your procedure. I am 21 this year just under 5ft 7 (173 cm). I am thinking of a height surgery for couple of years now but will only be looking for 3-4 inches max. Is there any recommendation you can give?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle, maybe we should go the Eastern European model or maybe the Zambian model of living. Before you blubber away about how bad the American way of doings things is, lets first remember that 90% of the world's innovation of the past 100 years has come from our "backwards" ways of doing things. I do realize that there will always be people who hate America out of jealousy and I can't blame you for that. If I didn't live in America, I'd be jealous and hate America too. Most of the rest of the world tries to implement democratic constitutions and the American way of life for a reason and there's a reason we have a massive IMMIGRATION problem, not EMIGRATION.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a Facebook, you can certainly contact me through there.
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