Doctors at Turin's Città della
Salute (Health City) complex have managed to replace the femur
of a child suffering from a lethal form of bone cancer with a
rebuilt one using a reversed humerus from a donor, ANSA sources
said on Thursday.
The child was six years old at the time of the operation
and is now eight and leads a normal life, having finished
oncological therapies.
It is the first such operation in Italy and there are no
precedents in the medical literature of such an intervention
being performed previously on such a young child.
The humerus is a long bone in the arm running from the
shoulder to the elbow. It has a nerve near the elbow which is
known as 'the funny bone'.
The femur, or thighbone, is the closest bone to the hip
joint.
The exceptional operation was carried out by the team of
Raimondo Piana, head of orthopaedic oncological surgery of the
Città della Salute.
The child was affected by a very rare tumour, with an
incidence of around 150 cases a year in Italy.
The doctors proceeded by removing the so-called distal part
of the femur, where it joins the knee.
They needed to use a humerus instead of a femur because of
the child's age and the fact that his knee was so small, doctors
explained.
The humerus was attached to the femur with a plate and by
reconstructing the kneecap and all the ligaments, preserving the
patient's tibia.
Bone cancers in paediatric subjects are rare tumours, the
doctors explained.
Thanks to a multidisciplinary approach - chemotherapy,
radiotherapy and surgery - they have a more favourable prognosis
these days compared to the recent past.
Children who are still growing, furthermore, present
problems concerning the reconstruction which has to grow,
itself, to avoid having different lengths of the legs in the
future.
The seminal surgery won the first world prize at the
prosthetic surgery technology congress held in Boston, United
States.
The surgical success was presented to the congress by
doctor Michele Boffano.
The scientific work presented focuses in particular on case
studies of muscle-skeleton paediatric tumours and was shared
with the paediatric oncology department of Turin's Regina
Margherita hospital, directed by Doctor Franca Fagioli.
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