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[ll3ll]

Hey, been lurking on the site for a while, and had a quick question - has anyone heard of purposefully decreasing the rate of lengthening for the sake of better recovery?

Looking at Guichet's results it seems like weight bearing and pre-op training is hugely beneficial (no surprise), but in terms of soft tissue damage/emphasis on athletic recovery, it seems to me that if you slowed down the lengthening process you'd get better results. Using femurs as the case in point, why not reduce the rate of lengthening from 1 mm to 0.5 mms per day ... I know the fear would be premature consolidation but tibias are lengthened at that rate generally and seem to do ok?

Basically was looking to the future with Synoste and thinking about the possibilities of retaining (somewhat) basic functioning/walking while lengthening. I don't know of any fundamental issues with lengthening bone/soft tissue as an adult following besides closure of growth plates, so it seems like if you could reduce the rate of expansion to get closer to that pubescent growth spurt you might have less or no effects.

What do you think??

[Stripes]

I think it's certainly beneficial to decrease the rate of lengthening in order to give the body time to develop new muscle, nerve and skin tissue. The problem of premature consolidation exists primarily when lengthening the femurs because so much more blood travels around the femur and healing is much quicker than that of the tibia. It's difficult to say how much of a difference it would make to slow down as I know a patient who lengthened 10 cm in the span of 4 months in his tibia and has recovered incredibly fast and regained the ability to jump 14 month post first surgery.

In terms of retaining basic functioning/walking while lengthening, slowing down will definitely allow you to be stronger and deal with less pain. You bring up an interesting point about getting closer to the pubescent growth rate but regardless, any type of lengthening will slow down your ability to walk or perform many functions you would have had before the operation.

[ub40]

Dr Mitkovic recommended .66 mm a day for us. Also one of the members here made a post about muscle recovery and .66 was the fastest rate before complications.

You have the right idea but there needs to be a fine balance between going slow enough to prevent damage and going fast enough to prevent pre-consolidation