A young man, who has spent about 20 years of his life walking with difficulty due to a 2.5 cm variation between his right and left legs, is relieved now. Doctors at Apollo Hospital, Visakhapatnam, have corrected the deformity through a limb lengthening surgery.
His parents, who hail from Himachal Pradesh, had settled at Rayagada in Odisha. The boy had a defect in his right leg, since birth. His parents ignored the problem, perhaps, due to fear that surgery could make even the other leg worse. The boy went through school and college and is now a techie in Pune.
“The bone is fractured in controlled conditions and is elongated and allowed to heal. The bone can be elongated up to 6 cm without any complications. In this case, we needed only 2.5 cm, but the problem was the single artery going to the limb”Dr. Ravi Chandra, Paediatric orthopaedic surgeon
“We performed the surgery in December 2021, and in 25 days the desired leg lengthening was achieved. The bone had healed itself in the regular process and the patient recovered well. The ‘limb lengthening device’ was removed after the leg lengths were equalised. The treatment is now complete and he can walk like any normal person, without any limp or requiring any support,” V. Ravi Chandra, paediatric orthopaedic surgeon, told the media here on Monday.
‘One artery’
“While limb lengthening surgeries were being routinely done at Apollo Hospital, this was a complicated and rare case as the patient had only one artery as against three main arteries, which nourish the limb. This rare condition, which occurs only 1 in 40,000 births, is known as ‘peronea magna’. As the blood supply to the limb was dependent only on a single artery, even a temporary spasm could be detrimental to the viability of the leg apart from post-operative complications like delayed healing,” he said.
Dr. Ravi Chandra said that the surgery was carefully planned and executed successfully with the help of in house vascular surgeons, anesthesia and critical care team.
“The bone is fractured in controlled conditions and is elongated and allowed to heal. The bone can be elongated up to 6 cm without any complications. In this case, we needed only 2.5 cm, but the problem was the single artery going to the limb,” he said in response to a query.
“In another case, pus formed in the limb of a 4-year-old boy, which stopped the growth of his bone in one limb. The boy was brought to us (Apollo Hospital), when he was 8-years-old, with a 4 cm difference in one limb. We had elongated the bone by 5 cm to provide for the growth of his other limb as he was still in the growing age,” Dr. Ravi Chandra said.
