Boy first in UK to have pioneering leg-lengthening surgery

UK: A nine-year-old boy has become the first person in the UK to have pioneering surgery to lengthen one of his legs.

Alfie Phillips has a rare condition called fibular hemimelia, which caused his right leg to not develop properly, leaving it more than an inch shorter than his left.

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Thanks to the new treatment by experts at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital he has been able to gain 3cm.

Alfie, from Northampton, said he had been “excited” and scared to be the first to have the procedure, but almost a year on he is now “running around as normal” and enjoyed playing basketball.