Quote:
Originally posted by wysiswyg
There is a way to make short people taller using surgery. It's only used for midget sized people only.
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Not always. The technique I think you're talking about was done experimantally at Stanford for children with limbs that wouldn't grow as fast as the others due to breakage or congenital defects.
I know because I was one ofthe early ones to get it done back in the seventies. In the early days, they used a one sided approach with a little corkscrew mechanism called the Wagner device that was attatched from the outside, all the way into the bone with long pins. It involved breaking the bone and slowly separating the two pieces in munute amounts over thirty days along with constant stretching of the surrounding tissues. When the separation was complete, and they got the extra inch or two of length they wanted, a bone graft would be done from another location in the body to fill the gap.
Ten years or so later they used a method that went into the limb from several different angles and a device that encircled the entire thing. They used it in the movie, GATTACA if you want a look.
Very painful. Think twice before you do it.