Small Peoples Surgery

Adding a couple of inches more to one’s height, is a dream for many short statured people. A Sharjah-based orthopaedic surgeon promises just that. “A individual can add six more inches to his height via this purely cosmetic surgery,” says Dr Shoiab Farooq, a specialist Orthopaedic Surgeon at Al Zahra Hospital in Sharjah. And as the saying goes, beauty comes at a cost. The lengthening process is painful, time consuming and pricey too. “A human bone grows one millimetre each day,” says the doctor. “So if we want inches, we need time.” The application of heel lifts is a painless and immediate solution. Sawing and cutting via the outer cortex from the bone and making a fracture-like state of the leg, the process includes stretching from the bone to provide it space to grow. The stretched bones are then held by a wired exterior frame that's kept in location until the new bone grows, sometimes even for up to 4 months. A patient can move about within days following the surgery although using the frames attached. To achieve the whole of six inches, a total of 4 surgeries on each the legs are required,” says Dr Shoaib. Each surgery provides a length of about two and two and half inches. “The surgeries need to be carried out beneath the knees also as on the thigh bones of every leg.” So why would individuals wish to mess with nature? “For boys much less than five feet 6 or girls shorter than 5 feet, it is a psychological issue. In some cases, models require such surgeries because they are just a few inches brief from the needed height,” says the physician. Leg-lengthening was first performed within the 1950s within the former Soviet Union, after which in China, but with sometimes catastrophic outcomes. The surgery is non-invasive and is a new technological advancement in orthopaedic corrective surgeries. A comparable method has been created by a Chinese doctor Bai Helong who has currently given the gift of height to about 3,000 individuals. Nevertheless, Dr Shoaib has just moved to the UAE from Saudi Arabia and is awaiting a management choice on fixing a cost for the surgery. “The metal frames and osigraft, a granular powder protein that fills the space whilst the bone grows to prevent infection are each expensive,” says the surgeon who has carried out numerous such surgeries within the UK. A post operative cosmetic surgery to remove the scars may also be needed based on the length needed. “We sometimes combine the exterior frame and rod for the treatment and sometimes we have to fix internal nails to hold the bone with each other,” he explains. “If the length is long, then we need the frame to remain in longer and this might leave scars that require a cosmetic repair,” he adds. The surgeon, nevertheless, says that because the process is largely non-invasive, the danger of infection is low. Patients under treatment need relaxing and stretching workouts to move their immobile muscles. The surgeon has used exactly the same method to correct a number of birth and development deformities also give a lease at life to accident victims.