BONE LENGTHENING

Bone lengthening.

The biology of bone lengthening

Distraction osteogenesis biologically resembles fracture healing with distinctive characteristics notably in the distraction phase of osteogenesis. In the latency phase of bone lengthening, like in the inflammatory phase of fracture repair, interleukines are released and act with growth factors released from platelets in the local haematoma, leading to attraction, proliferation and differentiat...

Residual bone growth after lengthening procedures

The prognosis of limb length discrepancy is a major subject in paediatric orthopaedic surgery. The strategy depends on the prognosis and must be adapted to each patient. The residual growth of the lengthened segment often remains unknown, but is dependent on age, the percentage of lengthening and other factors. Using a large cohort of 150 children who had undergone bone lengthening procedures, ...

Long bone deformity correction and bone lengthening procedures

Last year’s 34th Annual Meeting of the European Paediatric Orthopaedic Society (EPOS) was held in Marseille, France, on 15–18 April. A comprehensive pre-meeting course held on 15 April was dedicated to many complex aspects of long-bone deformity correction and bonelengthening procedures. The present issue of the Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics collates manuscripts of the presentations made a...

Bone lengthening: bridging joints, soft tissue releases, physiotherapy

When we lengthen a bone in a child, the parents and the family circle are often obsessed by the amount a lengthening obtained. However, for the surgeon, lengthen a bone is quite pretty easy, but dealing with the joints above and below the lengthening area can be very challenging. Indeed, during the lengthening process, muscles and tendons will be progressively stretched, leading to potential jo...