Students Develop Bone-Lengthening Device (Biloine Young @ OTW)
Life is about to get a whole lot better for children undergoing distraction osteogenesis, thanks to a group of senior students at Rice University, Houston, Texas. Distraction osteogenesis is a method of correcting bone deformities that leave one limb shorter than the other. About 10 million children have this problem in either their arms or legs.
To correct it, surgeons break the bone and insert a distractor that stretches the bone and, over time, tugs it to the appropriate length. To keep constant tension on the bone, the patient ...