SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

3-Year-old Gets Prosthetic Arm Bone

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In what they called a medical first in a toddler, surgeons at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital have implanted a telescoping artificial prosthesis in the arm of a 3-year-old to replace a humerus that was removed because of cancer. Nearly a year later, Mark Blinder is thriving and cancer-free.

Mark, now 4, developed pain in his right arm in April of last year. By July, oncologists had diagnosed Ewing's sarcoma, a rare bone tumor. Chemotherapy reduced the pain but did not eradicate the tumor. Radiation would have destroyed the growth plates in the bone, producing a physical impairment as the boy grew. The other common alternative is amputation.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Lawrence Rinsky of Stanford convinced parents Alla Ostrovskaya and Gene Blinder to consider a third option, an artificial bone produced by Biomet Inc. of Warsaw, Ind. Biomet produces artificial joints, which are quite common, and artificial bones, which are less so. The titanium/cobalt chrome expandable bone designed specifically for Mark was rare, spokesman Bill Kolter said.