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Want to be taller?

DUBAI - Put aside those two inch stilettos and in-built heels, shorty, and make way for a new leg lengthening procedure that adds permanent inches to your height.

Adding a few inches more to one’s height, is a dream for most short statured people. A Sharjah-based orthopaedic surgeon promises just that.

“A person can add six more inches to his height through 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 price. The lengthening procedure is painful, time consuming and costly too. “A human bone grows one millimetre a day,” says the doctor. “So if we want inches, we need time.”

Sawing and cutting through the outer cortex of the bone and creating a fracture-like state of the leg, the procedure includes stretching of the bone to give it space to grow. The stretched bones are then held by a wired exterior frame that is kept in place until the new bone grows, sometimes even for up to four months. A patient can move about within days after the surgery though with the frames attached.

To achieve the whole of six inches, a total of four surgeries on both the legs are required,” says Dr Shoaib. Each surgery gives a length of about two and two and half inches.

“The surgeries need to be done below the knees as well as on the thigh bones of each leg.”

So why would people want to mess with nature?

“For boys less than 5 feet 6 or girls shorter than five feet, it is a psychological issue. In some cases, models require such surgeries because they are just a few inches short of the required height,” says the doctor.

Leg-lengthening was first performed in the 1950s in the former Soviet Union, and then in China, but with sometimes catastrophic results.

The surgery is non-invasive and is a new technological advancement in orthopaedic corrective surgeries. A similar technique has been developed by a Chinese doctor Bai Helong who has already given the gift of height to about 3,000 patients.

However, Dr Shoaib has just moved to the UAE from Saudi Arabia and is awaiting a management decision on fixing a cost for the surgery.

“The metal frames and osigraft, a granular powder protein that fills the space while the bone grows to prevent infection are both expensive,” says the surgeon who has carried out a number of such surgeries in the UK.

A post operative cosmetic surgery to remove the scars may also be required depending on the length required. “We sometimes combine the exterior frame and rod for the treatment and sometimes we have to fix internal nails to hold the bone together,” he explains. “If the length is long, then we need the frame to stay in longer and this may leave scars that require a cosmetic repair,” he adds.

The surgeon, however, says that since the procedure is largely non-invasive, the risk of infection is low.

Patients under treatment require relaxing and stretching exercises to move their immobile muscles. The surgeon has used the same technique to correct a number of birth and development deformities as well give a lease at life to accident victims.

—asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com