Copyright 1997 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse
April 04, 1997 04:13 GMT
SECTION: International news
Short people get a leg up in new Russian clinic
BYLINE: Marielle Eudes
DATELINE:
MOSCOW, April 4
BODY: From the banks of the Volga River comes important news for the
"vertically challenged."
Using technology developed in the Soviet era, doctors in Volgograd, in Russia's deep
south, claim they can make short people three to 12 centimeters (one to 4-1/2
inches) taller. How? With an orthopedic apparatus that realigns a patient's bone structure in the
legs.
"It is placed around the leg, with fine points penetrating into the skin and fixing onto the
bone," said Mikhail Goldreer, who is promoting a center dedicated to the
operation.
"Slowly, the form or length (of the limb) is modified. Altogether, with necessary physical exercises to strengthen the bone
structure, the process takes six months," he said.
Goldreer, a former electrial engineer, said he went through the process himself, growing six centimeters
(nearly three inches) to 1.76 meters (six-foot-nine).
His days as a relatively short man ended in 1992, after he spent years trying to convince Soviet communist party
cadres, then Russian health authorities, to let him have the treatment.
Developed in the 1960s by Professor Gavril Ilizarov, it had already been put to good use to help mend the legs of accident
victims. It is known in many other countries, including the United States, but principally for the correction of deformed
limbs.
One of Ilizarov's disciples, Professor Mikhail Yegorov, "stretched" Goldreer in 1992, but operations then still had to be done
clandestinely.
Now they are more frequent and open, although the list of patients is an elite
one, including popular singer Vika Tsiganova, the anonymous wife of a Russian cabinet minister and the head of a metals
conglomerate, Goldreer said.
Russia's economic crisis helped. With little money left in the state treasury, health facilites are looking for new ways to bring in funds -- and as a
consequence, official conservatism is overcome.
From the clinic in a park, Yegorov and his team has been offering their body-extending services since
February, complete with sauna, tennis, swimming pool, beauty center and plastic
surgery.
Surgeons and assistants have been trained in recent months in Moscow.
And now, with support from the local Voltair tire factory's sports center,
"we now are ready to welcome foreign clients," Goldreer said. "We hope to become a profitable
center, known the world over," he said.
In Paris, Professor Henri Bensahel of Robert Debre hospital said the technique has been used for medical purposes on very short
people.
He himself recalled one instance in which he performed the operation on a youngster who was 1.45 meters tall
(four-foot-eight).
Its use for esthetic purposes is "an interesting social phenomenon", he
said.
But Goldreer said it was worth it: "The operation hurts a bit at the
beginning, but it leaves no scars."
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