By twisting a knob, a man lengthens his leg.

By twisting a knob, a man lengthens his leg.
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) -- Brian Kellam was 10 when he broke his right leg just below the knee, but doctors didn't spot the fracture in an X-ray and sent him home on crutches without a cast.
It took 26 years for the leg to be repaired.
A doctor on Tuesday removed the apparatus used in a six-month procedure to lengthen and straighten Kellam's right leg, which was bowed, afflicted with arthritis and nearly 2 inches shorter than his left as a result of the childhood injury.
The doctor, Robert F. Ostrum, said he doesn't know anyone else in the Philadelphia region who does the procedure, which was developed in the then-Soviet Union in the 1970s and has been used in the United States since the early 1980s. Ostrum has done it about 80 times since 1987.
The procedure works on limbs a little like braces work on teeth.
In this case, Ostrum rebroke the tibia bone of Kellam's shorter leg, then inserted six screws. Three went through the bone and three were simply drilled into it.
The screws were attached to rings made of carbon fiber.
"It looks like a little torture device," Kellam said.
Four times a day for seven weeks, Kellam turned a knob to pull apart the newly broken bone a half-millimeter at a time.
Kellam's body produced new bone to fill in the gap.
Ostrum said that in a few months, the bone will be solid.
"This is totally different from everything we're taught as orthopedic surgeons," Ostrum said.
Normally, he said, doctors try to repair bones by pushing together fractures.
The need for Ostrum's method is relatively rare, the doctor said, because technology makes it less likely that broken bones will go undetected. The doctor said his biggest group of patients consists of people like Kellam who were injured as children and are now in their 30s and have been living with limps and other problems.
Kellam said that it wasn't until he was in his early 20s that he learned his persistent limp was due to a bone problem rather than a knee problem.
Since then, the Honesdale, Pa., man has worn a lift in his right shoe to try to even things out.
For the effort at a permanent fix -- which he figured cost his insurance company around $50,000 -- Kellam, who works at an auto parts store and plays in a rock band, had to live with the rings around his leg for nearly six months.
Pain was more or less a constant companion, Kellam said. Often, he bled from the holes where the screws went in. Antibiotics were prescribed to prevent infection. He got around with the help of canes and crutches.
He'll be on the crutches for another month while his leg bone continues to strengthen.
Kellam hopes the pain and inconvenience will pay off on Oct. 9. He's getting married that day. He plans to dance at the wedding.
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