To mend difficult fractures // and correct deformities // bones
are being wrenched apart // to help them heal. Filling the Gap
In the realm of scientific discovery, distraction osteogenesis
qualifies more as happenstance than intentional innovation. Who
knows whether anyone would ever have tried to pull a fractured
bone apart to get it to heal if a patient hadn’t accidentally
reversed the tightening rod that was supposed to push together
the ends of his fractured femur. And if the doctor who noticed
the result—new bone filling in the gap between the separated
segments—hadn’t been Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov, surgeons might
not have practiced this revolutionary tissue-engineering
technique until decades later, if ever. “I might have told the
patient, ‘Don’t do that again,’ but the genius of Ilizarov was
that he wondered, ‘How can I get this to happen again?’” says J.
Tracy Watson, chief of orthopedic traumatology at the St. Louis
University School of Medicine. Most of the world didn’t hear of
Ilizarov’s techni