Friday 30 September 2022 10:57 PM Meet the men paying £70,000 for an excruciating leg-lengthening operation to ... trends now

Friday 30 September 2022 10:57 PM Meet the men paying £70,000 for an excruciating leg-lengthening operation to ... trends now
Friday 30 September 2022 10:57 PM Meet the men paying £70,000 for an excruciating leg-lengthening operation to ... trends now

Friday 30 September 2022 10:57 PM Meet the men paying £70,000 for an excruciating leg-lengthening operation to ... trends now

When Daniel Asadi was 14, he was told by his doctor that his growing phase was all but over. ‘He said I was pretty much done,’ recalls Daniel today.

At nearly 5 ft 7 in, Daniel was already a reasonable height — but the words were still a ‘stab in the heart.’

‘It’s really hard for a lot of people to understand, but I couldn’t handle it,’ he says. ‘It was this one thing I didn’t have, and it was on my mind day and night.’

Not any more. In May last year — 11 years on from that distressing doctor’s appointment — Daniel, then 25, underwent leg-lengthening surgery to gain the height he so desperately craved.

The operation is not for the faint-hearted. It involved breaking both femurs (thigh bones) and spending several months using a walker and crutches during recuperation. Yet today, now measuring just over 5 ft 10 in, Daniel would do it all again in a heartbeat.

‘Making a decision to have your legs broken seems nonsensical to many people,’ he says. ‘But for me, my life depended on it. It was all I could think of and I was willing to do anything for it.’

Nor is he alone: Daniel is just one of a growing band of men, and a smaller number of women, opting for the sometimes risky surgery in a bid to be taller.

Several clinics offering the surgery in the UK are reporting a surge in enquiries in the past year for the once-niche operation, usually employed to address traumatic injury or birth defects.

‘There is definitely increased demand,’ Matija Krkovic, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in limb reconstruction tells the Mail. ‘I am seeing several patients for a consultation next week and enquiries to my clinic have risen in the past few months — I have no idea why, as I do not actively advertise.’

A respected consultant at a UK clinic, who has chosen to remain anonymous, tells a similar story. While most of his work concerns correcting deformity and leg-length discrepancy, he is currently receiving about five enquiries a week from patients looking to lengthen both legs.

‘We talk about being “inclusive” and “diverse”, but height is a real issue, especially for men,’ he says. ‘I think life has changed: body image is very important.’

On paper of course, the idea that you can grow taller while well into adulthood seems like science fiction.

In fact, limb-lengthening was pioneered as far back as the 1950s by Gavriil Ilizarov, a Soviet doctor treating injured soldiers returning from World War II.

Before and after: Today, now measuring just over 5 ft 10 in, Daniel would do it all again in a heartbeat

Before and after: Today, now measuring just over 5 ft 10 in, Daniel would do it all again in a heartbeat

Today, many of the principles employed by Ilizarov remain the same, although advances in technology mean the procedure has become far more sophisticated and safer.

Traditionally, patients undergoing leg-lengthening have a hole drilled into their femurs, which are then broken in two.

A metal rod is fitted inside and held in place by screws attached to an external ‘fixator’ which the patient uses to extend the internal rod by up to 1mm each day until reaching the desired height, after which their bones can heal back together.

Internal rods — powered by either battery packs or magnets — have abolished the need for an external frame, and thus wounds, reducing the risk of infection.

Nonetheless, like any surgery, the process is not without complications — one reason why, despite receiving several enquiries a month, Matija Krkovic is reluctant to perform it for this purpose at his Cambridge practice.

‘I’ve worked extensively with leg fractures and trauma, but a few years ago I started to be approached about leg lengthening for cosmetic reasons,’ he reveals. ‘I had some reservations — but then I realised that for a small group of people it could bring huge benefits so I decided to start offering the opportunity — but with certain caveats.’

Among them are that any patient who wants to go ahead with surgery must undergo psychological evaluation, while Krkovic starts every discussion with what can go wrong.

‘The advantage of performing the surgery for cosmetic reasons is that you have a healthy individual with healthy bones and no other injuries,’ he explains. ‘The flip side is if things go wrong you are transforming a perfectly healthy individual into someone with a lot of problems.

In May last year Daniel, then 25, underwent leg-lengthening surgery to gain the height he so desperately craved

In May last year Daniel, then 25, underwent leg-lengthening surgery to gain the height he so desperately craved 

‘Chronic infection in the bone, nerve damage, joint dislocation and the bone not healing are all possible complications. It is not high-risk, but it’s high enough for me to want to be very careful.’

Krkovic has fielded requests from men in their 50s. ‘Perhaps it is a mid-life crisis,’ he says. But most of his patients are younger men.

Indeed Daniel, now a 26-year-old civil engineer from Toronto, was fixated on his height from a young age.

‘I came from a shorter family — my dad was 5 ft 4 in, mum was about 5 ft 2 in, so genetics were not in my favour,’ he says. ‘It didn’t help that I was also always referred to as the fat kid. When you get that label it’s hard to shake it off. It affected me a lot.’

As the years passed, Daniel tried counselling to get over his agonising self-consciousness.

‘It didn’t work,’ he says. ‘I knew I had a lot of things to be grateful for — a loving family, a good job. I didn’t have problems meeting girls, either. But it all didn’t matter to me. No matter what I did, my height was always there.’

Finally, at 23, he started to research surgery.

‘I knew there was something out

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