Staged limbs lengthening in preventing deformities and correcting achondroplasic dwarves– 25 years experience

Achondroplasic patients are considered not only as individuals with short stature, but also as affected from several deformities of their body, like spinal stenosys, joint stiffness, limb axial and rotatory deviations. The surgical therapy for these patients has the aim to correct body deformities and specially lower limbs deviations obtaining, at the same time, a normal proportion between body and limbs length; for the upper limbs the aim is to correct deviations and to amiliorate their function. The paper reports a casuistry of 116 achondroplasic dwarves who underwent to 680 operations, during the last 25 years, with the method of the so called “fractrinated lower limb lengthening” that consists in obtaining the definitive lengthening by operating in 4 times for lower limbs an in one time for the upper limbs. Surgical techniques, complications and results are illustrated