HUNCHBACK SURGERY.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 2028, 18 September 1913, Page 3

HUNCHBACK SURGERY.

STRENGTHENING, THE SPTNE WITH BONE FROM THE LEG.

London, August 8. Fifty doctors from t*-e International O' ngress of Medicne, including representatives of Spain. Italy, France, Austria, thi United States, and England, crowded the operating theatre ot trte Royal Orthopaedic Hospital to see Dr F. Alhee, of New York, perform for the firgt time in England his new operation which has praotically revoloti nised the treatment of tuberculosis of the spine, the cause of hunc -back. The basis of our present methods of treatment of the disease, writes a London s rgeon wh■» witnessed the operation, is to reduce to a minima a the movements of the oiseased spinal bones, one on the other, by means of splints or plaster casts applied to the bo y. Dr. Albee applies his splint to the affectted ends tf the ciseased bones themselves With the patient, a child of four, lying on its face, Dr. Albee made a semicircular incision through the skin and raised a skin flap some three inches in niameter from over the diseased bones. Then the projecting portions of each vertebra (the little, b ny knobs which can be felt under" the skin) were split vertically aboot a t ird of an inch deep with a chisel and mallet. This wound was then temporarily covered in with bandages and a new skin incision was made over the front of the sMn bone. With a circular electric saw D. Albee then cut out of the shin a piece of bone about three inc es long and a third of a inoh wide. T is was the inseited edgeways into the furrow made by splittin« the projecting spines of the three or four diseased vertebrae. The split was then firmly fixed in place by stitching t- e ligaments to each side of the backbone over it. Both wounds were then close) and the child was sent back to bet.

Because this bony splint keeps the diseased i orfci n of the backb ne much more fixe and immovable than is possible by using splints or casts abont the trunk as a whole, Dr. Albee finds that a onre cpn generally be expecte in from live to six months after the operation. Under the old met od the patient was very lncky if ne was cured under three or four years