Although the operation sounds strange-it turns out that knee-high feet facing the back of the body can give children a more active lifestyle and better leg function than other treatments such as total leg amputation. In this case, Amelia's hind foot acts as a knee joint.
"Directly speaking, this is our best choice," Amelia's mother Michelle Eldred told the BBC. With a prosthetic leg, a girl can do everything she likes, including dancing and sports. But eldred said that if her whole leg is amputated, she is unlikely to have a good range of motion. [27 strangest medical cases]
Rare Operation According to Dana Farber/ Boston Children and Blood Center, Amelia's operation is a rare operation called rotational plasty, which is used to treat bone tumors near the knee. According to Birmingham news media, in this case, Amelia was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which is the most common type of bone cancer in children, resulting in malignant tumor of her left femur.
In this type of operation, the doctor first removes the middle part of the leg, including the bottom of the calf, femur, knee and upper tibia. Then, they took out the rest of the calf, rotated it 180 degrees, and reattached it to the femur. According to Dana Farber/Boston Children
The foot is turned backwards, so it can play the role of knee joint. Dr Joel Mayerson, an orthopedic oncologist at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that a prosthetic limb was attached to the foot, and the patient's leg was basically the same as an amputation below the knee, and he had nothing to do with the case. This is very important, because above-knee amputees need to consume 70% more energy than normal people to walk with artificial limbs, but above-knee amputees only consume 20% more energy than normal people, myerson said.
"This is a good choice for them to play a good role in the use of modern artificial limbs," myerson told Life Science.
Rotational plastic surgery is most commonly performed on children under 12 years old. They are usually better at retraining their brains and using their ankles as knee joints. According to Dana Farber/Boston Children's, in addition, young children have many growing things to do, which will make other treatments for bone cancer more challenging.
For example, a method called limb salvage surgery can be used to treat osteosarcoma, but this technique requires doctors to replace part of the patient's bones with metal implants or cadaver bones. Myerson said that these materials will not grow with the growth of children, so a child needs multiple operations to lengthen his limbs before he can grow with the growth of children. On the contrary, he said, compared with rotational plasty, "most of the time, this is just an operation, and you have finished it."
Dana Farber/Boston Children's said that another advantage of rotational plastic surgery is that it can keep children in a very active lifestyle, including high-intensity activities such as running and jumping, which is impossible for limb salvage surgery. According to the research of Stanford Children's Health Research Institute, patients undergoing rotational plastic surgery also avoid phantom limb pain, which is common in traditional amputation, because the nerves in the calf are protected. According to the live report in Birmingham, in August of October17, patients with ith osteosarcoma received multiple chemotherapy before undergoing rotational plastic surgery in June of 2065 438+07. Reporting live from Birmingham, recent scans show that Amelia's bones have fused well after the operation.
Amelia showed real courage and confidence when she showed her legs, although it looked a little different, "said Dr. Li Jiesi, an orthopedic consultant at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham, England." I'm glad that she can continue to do all the things that normal children can do, including sports and dancing,' he said in a statement.