Just something I've been thinking about...
Let's say we have 2 guys, patient A and patient B. Both of them want to do 6cm on femurs.
Patient A lengthens at a relatively fast rate of 1.5mm a day, and is done with his lengthening in 40 days. Patient B lengthens at a slow rate of 0.75mm a day, and is thus done in 80 days.
Does that actually mean, all things equal (i.e. assuming patient A doesn't have complications from lengthening too quickly, and patient B doesn't suffer pre-consolidation from lengthening too slowly) that patient A will have a 'full recovery' 40 days faster? I'm not sure it does.
We know that bone is growing during the lengthening period, which is why we all get checkups every few weeks to see how it's going on that end. My theory is that, regardless of the rate of lengthening, the 'total time to a full recovery' is going to be about the same with these 2 patients. True, patient A starts the consolidation phase 40 days earlier, but at the 41st day, he still only has the same bone growth as patient B. From day 41-80 (i.e. A's consolidation, B's lengthening) it's true enough A will have bone growth, but surely so will B, it's just B hasn't finished lengthening yet but when he does, he'll likely have a 40 days shorter consolidation period than A, as he grew more bone during his lengthening phase whereas A grew more during the consolidation phase.
The only way this wouldn't be true, is if bone grows faster during consolidation than during lengthening. Does anyone know if that's true or not?
Because if it's not, I really see no reason to aggressively push to try and finish lengthening as early as possible. The recovery time would be around the same overall.