When surgeons remove a bone tumor from a young child, they face a problem no metal implant solves well: the child is still growing. One answer is to take a living segment of the fibula, the slender outer bone of the lower leg, along with its growth plate and its own blood supply, and move it to rebuild the damaged bone. In theory, the transplanted growth plate continues to grow with the child.
A team from France and Romania has now tracked what actually happened to nine children who received that operation over three decades. The results, published in International Orthopedics, are considerably more complicated than the concept suggests.
