With the help of magnetic rods, surgery to make people taller has become easier in the past decade. Though it mainly impacts their femurs, the procedure can have a profound mental and emotional impact on patients, according to a doctor who performs it.
“This is life-altering,” Dr. Shahab Mahboubian of the Height Lengthening clinic in Burbank, Calif., recently told Buzzfeed News. “It really changes people’s lives. Their whole outlook on life, the way people perceive them, the way they feel about themselves. It really affects all aspects of their life.”
He said that the procedure has become more popular during the pandemic, as more people had time to be off their feet for the healing process.
Surgery to lengthen bones was initially pioneered in the 19th century to help correct uneven limbs, according to the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. However, the early surgeries had high complication rates.
Then, in the 1950s, Russian physician named Gavriil Ilizarov created the circular external fixator, a metal frame that wrapped around legs externally and was attached to bone through the patients’ skin with wires. This device helped improve limb lengthening procedures.
By 2016, a “magnet-powered telescoping rod that is bolted entirely inside the bone,” replaced the brace, said a report from Stanford Medicine.
This is the approach Mahboubian uses for his limb lengthening patients.
“Through small little incisions, I cut the bone surgically,” he told Buzzfeed’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud. He further explained that the drilling through the bone weakens it and then a chisel device called a osteotome is used to accurately cut the bone.
“Then I insert a rod — we call it a nail or a rod — that goes inside the bone,” said Mahboubian. “The rod is magnetic and it has gears. Then there’s an external device that communicates with the nail. And over time, little by little, it lengthens out the nail.”
Abdelmahmoud also spoke to one of patients, a formerly 5’7, 25-year-old California man identified as “Scott” who underwent the surgery this year and is in recovery.
Scott demonstrated how he used “a large gray device about the size of a thick laptop,” on his thigh for the lengthening process. When he put the device on his thigh, a small target appeared on the screen.
“I have these blue X’s, and there’s a finder here where I have to line it up.” After Scott pressed a button and the machine whirred, said Abdelmahmoud. “Each activation of this machine expands the gears by a third of a millimeter.”
During the process, bone segments are slowly pulled apart and new regenerate bone forms in the space between them, according to the International Center for Limb Lengthening in Baltimore, Md. Gradual lenghenting of the bone “forces the body to constantly grow new bone and soft tissues such as skin, muscles, nerves and blood vessels,” said the center.
Scott goes through the process three times a day – about a millimeter altogether each day. To get to his goal of 5’10, Scott is required to do the process for 80 days. His overall recovery is expected to take around a year.
Before lengthening can begin, bones allowed to rest for a five to seven days “latency period” after surgery to begin the healing process, said the International Center for Limb Lengthening. While in the hospital, Scott said he took small steps shortly after surgery to begin the healing process. For the most part, he had to lie on his back with his legs out straight.
“The hospital is tough,” Scott told Buzzfeed.
“When you cut the bone, you get swelling around that area, but that goes away after a few days. Then there’s the lengthening pain, which is a stretching type of pain,” Mahboubian said. “But it’s tolerable because it’s done very slowly.”
Recovery also includes stretching, regular monitoring and three months of physical therapy four times a week. Possible complications include blood clots, breaking the nail, overproduction of new bone or underproduction of bone. However, Mahboubian said nearly all patients who follow instructions and complete therapy have zero complications.
“It’s surreal to be midway through the process,” said Scott, who decided to get the surgery after feeling defeated and depressed for years when he heard comments about his height. The jabs seemed to come from everywhere, from TV and movies to his favorite TikTok accounts and even his coworkers.
“There’ll be days where I’ll see a meme that bothers me,” Scott said. “Then I’ll remember I had the surgery done…it allows me to not spiral out of control and lose hours of my day anymore.”
According to Buzzfeed, cosmetic limb lengthening to make people taller rather than to even out mismatched limbs is a new phenomenon, around 15 years old.
Victor Egonu, a Baltimore bodybuilder who had limb-lengthening surgery when he was 23 after a car accident left him with uneven limbs, advocates for all types of limb lengthening.
“I’m trying to show that, for the guys who the surgery means a lot to, it should be as accepted as a woman getting a boob job or a nose job or something like that,” he told Buzzfeed.
While Scott’s 5’7 height was actually close to that of the average American male, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, cultural perceptions of short men wore on him. Last February, he decided to start an OnlyFans account to make some of the $75,000 cost for the procedure.
“I was not treated with respect,” Scott said. “At every single workplace I’ve been in, there've been several situations where people commented on my height to discredit me entirely as a person.”
Indeed, studies have shown that shorter men are at greater risk for depression and that taller males can have advantages on dating apps.
Mahboubian said the maximum lengthening amount is 8 centimeters, since going beyond that could lead to complications. He also said that he does not often do the procedure on people who are already tall. His tallest patient had a starting height of 5’11, two inches taller than Mahboubian himself.
Before he hit a growth spurt, the doctor was also the subject of height-based teasing.
“I was a late bloomer, so I was always the shortest one of my friends,” he said. “So I got a lot of the jokes and the being talked down to during those stages of my life.”
While men who struggle with cultural perceptions regarding their height have a better surgical option today than in the past, others are trying to embrace shorter heights. According to Vice, social media users have been inspired by 5’8 “Spiderman: No Way Home” star Tom Holland and his 5’10 co-star and girlfriend Zendaya to declare this season “short king spring.”
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