You may have heard about elective surgery some people have to lengthen their legs in order to be taller. That's the kind of story that makes it into the news. But medical intervention to lengthen bones is not new, and it's sometimes necessary for health. If one leg is longer than the other, that can lead to other bones being misaligned, or a curved backbone. And lots of pain. This video doesn't go into the ethics of elective leg-lengthening surgery, but rather gives us a tutorial on how it's done.
Leg lengthening relies on the way our bones heal by themselves when broken. The real trick is to keep the bone perfectly straight and healing properly. Developments in this kind of surgery over the past century have made it possible for more people to finally have aligned legs to walk on. This TED-Ed lesson from Jason Shih Hoellwarth tells the story in all its gory detail.
Read an article in The Guardian recently regarding people getting this done just to be taller.
‘Being short is a curse’: the men paying thousands to get their legs broken – and lengthened