A rare cancer surgery is the only way Dugan Smith, 13, could play baseball again. That is all the teenager needed to hear. Nearly three years ago, when Smith was 10, he noticed soreness in his right knee after sliding.
“When I was ten years old I realized I was limping a lot and I broke my leg and realized I had cancer,” Dugan said.
What he thought was just a limp turned out to be a malignant tumor on the thigh bone.
The brave young athlete could have chosen several methods of recovery, but only one would allow full leg growth.
The rare procedure he chose is called Van Ness Rotation-Plasty, a surgery performed by Dr. Joel Mayerson of Ohio State’s James Cancer Hospital.
Instead of using a full prosthetic or an artificial bone, doctors removed the middle part of Smith’s leg, rotated the bottom half 180 degrees, moved it up and connected his blood vessels.
Full story: Boy’s Lifesaving Surgery Reconnects Leg Backward – WJW