Beating Bone Cancer

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BALTIMORE, Md. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- When bone cancer strikes, many children are left without limbs. Now, there is a cutting-edge option that could help kids grow limbs and lead normal lives.

“My bones have a lot more mileage than yours do. They’re old bones,” Greg Hammann tells his six-year-old daughter, Teresa. Although Teresa’s bones were fairly young, it looked as if bone cancer would claim the bones in her right arm and shoulder last year.

“We were scared for the worst, of course,” says Greg.

“It was ruining my bones a little,” Teresa says.

Chemotherapy successfully destroyed the tumor, but the top of Teresa’s arm bone had to go.
Ordinarily, Kristine Weber, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and oncologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says the bone would have to be amputated and replaced with a metal prosthesis. “The problem with a metal prosthesis is that it doesn’t grow with the patient,” explains Dr. Weber. “So [if Teresa’s] 5 years old, her arm is essentially going to be pretty close to a 5-year-old’s arm unless we get something to grow.” 

Dr. Weber is one of the few doctors in the world who performs a rare surgery as an alternative to prosthetics. When doctors performed the procedure on Teresa, a surgical team took more than 50 percent of Teresa’s leg bone and moved it to her arm, connecting bones, blood vessels, and the growth plate. “Now that [leg] bone will hopefully grow and think it’s actually still in the leg but it will be growing in the arm,” Dr. Weber says.

Teresa lost about five inches of fibula during the procedure and now limps, but Dr. Weber says she will eventually walk normally. Early tests show the arm will grow, and if it does, Teresa won’t need subsequent surgery. Though effective, the surgery can be tough on kids -- it takes about 13 hours, and recovery involves wearing casts on the arm and leg for six weeks.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Kristy Weber, MD
Johns Hopkins Hospital
(410) 955-2888