Surgeons pioneer new technique to treat boy with rare leg condition in UK first

Evening Standard

A nine-year-old boy has become the first person in the UK to have pioneering surgery to make him taller.Alfie Phillips has fibular hemimelia, which affects fewer than one in 40,000 births and caused his right leg to not develop properly, leaving it more than an inch shorter than his left.Experts implanted a lengthening nail on the surface of Alfie’s right thigh bone, which was slowly pulled apart over time using magnets to help him gain 3cm.

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00:07I

00:26I mean, when I was

00:29obviously when I was a lot younger

00:31I wasn't really

00:33I didn't really think it was any different

00:35because obviously I'd grew up with it

00:36so I didn't really think I was different

00:38I mean, the main thing I enjoy is obviously being

00:41the first in the UK

00:42to have the operation

00:44and mainly being taller than my friends

00:48Everybody was just

00:49all the attention was on me

00:51because I hadn't been there

00:53and then the whole day

00:55well, I mean, the only time I was being there

00:57because I wasn't there the whole day

00:59He can do absolutely everything now

01:01run, jump, skip

01:02which is the one thing he couldn't do before

01:05so yeah, no, he can do absolutely anything now

01:07climb trees

01:09go on the trampoline

01:10all of the things that he was unable to do before

01:12So

01:13I

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