The Extreme Lengths To Grow Taller: Limb-Lengthening Surgery In India | Undercover Asia

[Music] hundreds of men in india have paid to have their legs lengthened [Music] their surgeon only operates if he believes their height is ruining their lives it is the society which which makes them feel that oh you are short and that's why everything is happening because you're short the person cannot fight with the society and people around degrading them and creating that you're high disgusting but this cosmetic surgery is far from risk-free the most dangerous cosmetic procedure i would say this is foreign a highly invasive procedure developed to correct deformities [Music] be used for cosmetic reasons [Music] my name is dr rama sireen i'm an orthopedic surgeon and now i've chosen my speciality to make people tall [Music] the operation dr sarin is conducting today involves breaking both his patients legs it's technically called limb lengthening surgery and i've been doing it for the last 20 years but there is a tremendous growth in patients and they voluntarily come to become tall he gets calls from all over the world and all over india from people who believe their height is ruining their lives nine out of ten of them are men the best thing is when you interact with with anybody you have to come eyes to eyes short people for them it's a real stigma if you are to see your opponent or anybody whether it is your senior or junior and if you are to look up you are morally and emotionally already defeated [Music] deciding just who gets the surgery and who does not can put the doctor in a very difficult position any of these people who come they are a little bit off balance and you know emotionally and hurt and it's very difficult to say no no means they don't accept it a person has come motivated and you say you are not the ideal candidate right and they get very upset and annoyed one fellow in front of me broke glass one fellow threw a paperwork on me [Music] today his patient is a 36 year old sales consultant from the suburbs of delhi hey doctor how are you doing good doctor there's a stigma attached to such operations and he doesn't want people around him to find out so he has requested anonymity he's using amit as his pseudonym you're ready for the surgery i'm ready for the last time you have any second part we can send you back home so doctor i'm all set he's one meter 60 tall not that short by indian standards but he's desperate to be taller and dr serene is the expert he's now done limb lengthening surgery on almost 400 people we take you by 11 thirty twelve uh a villain takes anesthesia then preparation for the both the legs okay it would take around 40 to 45 minutes for the one leg okay we'll be doing a right leg first okay by when i can i contact my wife uh maybe four o'clock so will i have access to my cell phone give it to jijo okay we will okay fair enough anything else you want to ask no doctor okay mentally okay so okay shall i see you in the ot [Music] yes amit has a new job in the united states and is convinced that to be respected he'll need to be taller [Music] everyone around me is tall you know they're like five ten or 6. that is something which always remains in your head i guess but now us from professional and career point of view i want to take this chance amit has no family or friends at his bedside so not a lot of people know about it my wife doesn't know how invasive this surgery is his wife thinks he's having surgery for tennis elbow once they see the change has happened and there's nothing wrong that's when they are all okay right dr serene trained as a salvage surgeon treating emergency cases and conducted more than 3 000 orthopedic surgeries before turning to the limb lengthening specialty it's a kind of surgery that requires diy tools more than surgical instruments there are only screws nuts bolts everywhere and the inventory is very big you you play with the power tools i was very good with meccano where he used to have and used to make greens and trucks and all this thing and the contraption for amit surgery looks very much like mcconnell [Music] see this is a tibia bone right we put a nail from here right on that external device you can see the wires an intramedullary nail is drilled into the tibia bone and fixed to frames that hold everything in place after the bones are broken the rods holding these frames known as distractors are then expanded each day following the operation as the bones regenerate to fill the gap the range of height gain is about 7 to 14 centimeters when you're lengthening a bone the bone lengthens very easily the muscles are hard all the research has been done you can lengthen the muscles by 12 to 15 percent of your original length of your leg it was injured soviet soldiers returning from the second world war that inspired a doctor in siberia to come up with this technique that was later hidden from the rest of the world by the soviet union by the 1990s gavril elitherov's method was being openly taught at two russian institutes dr sarin was then training to become an orthopedic surgeon and wanted to learn the procedure so he enrolled i was the only only foreigner as a postgraduate student and the city had never seen an indian before elizarov's invention was meant for people born with limb deformities or those involved in devastating accidents not cosmetic purposes there are some in the indian orthopedic world today who frown upon this procedure is it because of low self-esteem or is it really a genuine need i mean a person who is five feet fine i mean if he wants to go up to five two five three five four it's okay a person who's already five six wants to go to five nine there has to be something wrong any surgical procedure has it in the right set of complications god forbid if you end up with such complications you won't be able to justify if you were doing it only for the cosmetic purposes [Music] physiotherapy doesn't scare me i think that having frames that sort of scares me [Music] as dr sarin's team prepares a theater amit's getting nervous there are moments when you feel that you know there is no need and why do you go through all that hassle maybe i'm right maybe i'm wrong i don't know time will tell but for your own self-confidence i think a couple of centimeters shouldn't hurt amit has convinced himself that his recovery will be quicker than what dr sarin has outlined we are not aspiring from too many centimeters the recovery is faster so i might take a decision to get rid of frames earlier as well maybe in next 20 days human body is an amazing thing and it recovers right the average height of indian men was one meter 67 tall seven centimeters taller than amit indonesians are the shortest the netherlands is at the top the average indian man is not much shorter than his american counterpart after the ranking was adjusted last year to include rural areas increasing the average indian male's height by more than 5 centimeters to 1 meter 72. dr sarin normally charges 20 000 us dollars per operation much cheaper than the 75 000 charged by american surgeons the average wage in india is 440 u.s dollars a month making it exorbitant for most but demand is still growing dr sarin actually received more requests in 2020 from people working from home because of covet 19 as it meant they could convalesce in secret so what is the perfect height in india at the dm stars india talent agency looks matter hi my name is priti jen and i am 28 years old i stand 5 feet seven stall i am 22 years old my height is five feet four inches my height is five seven my height is five four my height is five feet five inches i stand five feet ten inches tall i need more today these models are hoping to strut the catwalk of the next big fashion show this is the perfect match when it comes to height criteria agar moshi height we still look for tall dark and handsome kind of models the desirable height of a male model stands to be six feet uh it can't be less than that female models height needs to be five seven in the next room they're casting for a movie indian society is no different to most with men expected to be taller than their wives and nowhere is this more obvious than in bollywood [Music] [Music] height is even crucial when casting the smaller roles [Music] so what is the point i think cinema take one action you might be the best actor for the role but if you don't have the right height you won't get the call back at the medical institute amit is in the operating theater he wants to gain more respect amongst his colleagues and believes this is the only way 36 year old ahmed is about to have both his legs broken there is nothing wrong with them he just thinks he'll be more successful in his career in tech if he's taller [Music] so he's getting dr sarin orthopedic surgeon at the three balaji action medical institute in delhi to lengthen his legs [Music] very very small incidents so now we'll make the incision on the top for the nails of oil first a wire is inserted along amit's calf bone i'm sure that's a perfect place for a nail to go in then the nail is inserted over the wire yeah nail has gone inside very first thing is the fibula which is the smaller one that has to be broken right so the other way it hinders in lengthening the bone is then broken before the distractor that widens the gap a millimeter at a time is bolted to it [Music] ahmed's broken legs are now held together with just rods frames and bolts with the procedure over he begins to come round what do you mean i think yeah yeah okay [Music] it's now that the growing begins as amit will be shown how to lengthen his legs a millimeter at a time height doesn't only determine one's chances at making it big in bollywood it also affects the odds of finding the right life partner and no one would know this better than suman taneji a veteran matchmaker of 20 years [Music] setting up prospective partners is still very much an indian norm and she has witnessed firsthand the importance of height for both men and women [Music] today she's helping 30 year old english teacher ankita find a prospective husband with her parents present for moral support [Music] actually discussion initially i was not open to five nine okay but then it's okay but then they say short-haired then why would i go for that person everybody says okay everybody points to me as a as tall girl they remember me as tall somebody told me yes five eight is a good height yes at one meter 72 ankita is tall by indian standards the average female is only 1 meter 60. financial background it's not only ankita who has certain requirements most indian men don't want a tall woman either i think if i talk about male perspective they're a bit egoistic the men will think oh i have to be tall and my wife has to be short and i think our mindset has been i think trained for that but we you know we girls look for a tall person shalom [Music] requiring a certain height in order to secure a prospective partner is old news to dr sarin he's heard it all before currently he turns down the majority of all requests for surgery only operating on about one in a hundred their reasons for wanting to undergo the procedure have to be genuine and expectations realistic [Music] there were psychological issues right which they don't want to talk to anybody you tell them go and see psychiatrists go and see psychologists they say no we will not do it so what i do is i take the all inputs that you know why you want what is the family background what is this everything is taken then i discuss with my colleagues as a psychiatrist and the psychologist can i go ahead with the surgery and if we find any issues here and there right we say no even his daughter was tempted kamna serene was still in middle school when she asked her father to perform limb lengthening surgery on her everybody told me that oh she's going to be so tall because her father's so tall but i didn't come out tall and that really hurt because i would go to say you know a family function and they'd be like and i would be like yeah i can't change that about me my sister was much taller than me i was always jealous of the fact that she was taller and i didn't get to be taller people didn't realize that the more they said it the more it hurt and the more it hurt it made me less confident about who i was as a person and that's when i started feeling like i'm going into a shell and i started withdrawing and when my dad told me you know there are ways of becoming tall i started contemplating it and i was pretty serious about it and i was like listen if you can do it for everybody else why not me at school the girls around me had shot up i was always the armrest between all my friends it became a standing joke that your father makes people taller but he hasn't made you tall when she was 16 17 and she would every day get up and tell me that make me tall make me tall make me talk i said okay you finish your studies and we do it my father said that we can do it whatever you want my mom was not okay with it but then came the actual tussle where he was like this is what's going to happen you're going to have to be you know in bed for a few months you're going to have to be your legs will be cut there will be pain and that's when i started thinking that is it really worth it she decided not to go ahead with it a few years later she became a clinical psychologist and now counsels those who are considering the operation she started counseling people not to get it done so here we have a competition in my practice i see a lot of people who are dealing with their identities that have been you know established based on their height it starts off as something really small as maybe a comment and turns into this dysfunctional thought or it becomes like an encompassing thought that maybe something is wrong with me and throughout the therapeutic process a lot of it is building on shedding these identities that people have given [Music] them [Music] 900 miles south on the outskirts of mumbai a young man regrets ever wishing he was taller as a teenager aj patel had grown to just one meter 20 tall and was being teased in high school [Music] so he and his mother decided to seek help they were referred to a female orthopedic specialist foreign foreign the operation cost his family three thousand us dollars aj believes that because he came from a poor family that the doctor and the colleagues she instructed to do the later operations three years later aj was referred to another specialist for his sixth operation second me he learned then that his lack of growth was due to a bone not growing properly in his hips and that he should never have had limb lengthening surgery and it did aj now stands at one meter 52 tall he made a police report about the first surgeon but didn't take it any further quickly foreign [Music] asia approached the hospital to respond to aj's allegations his doctor wrote back calling them totally false and baseless adding that the four subsequent operations after his initial surgery were to control infection due to the lack of proper pin care for hygiene and his refusal to be readmitted when advised all the surgeries she stated were done by qualified surgeons with sufficient experience and no experimentation was done she then forwarded a letter she said was written by aj in 2015 where he apologized for making false allegations in the media about his treatment and stated he had full faith in the doctor it appears to have been signed by his mother and have his thumbprint aj has since denied ever writing the letter or putting his thumbprint on any document aj patel is not the only one there have been numerous reports of limb lengthening operations in other hospitals that have left patients crippled or struggling to recover dr serene puts these down to improper medical training and inexperienced surgeons experimenting on patients where did they learn like about the person who is teaching where did he learn did he go to russia did he spend a couple of years there to learn that [Music] dr seren checks on amit as he starts his recovery his bones are still in the process of growing so how was the night night was a little different oh yeah a little uncomfortable before the operation ahmed told his wife that he was hospitalized for tennis elbow she now knows the truth it's going to be a long road to recovery it will take another nine weeks and hours of daily physiotherapy before he can walk again [Music] in another ward a new patient is being prepared for surgery [Music] just measuring your length okay so we can plan again but it's a new procedure and one that dr sarin has never performed before [Music] dr sarin's next patient is being prepared for an operation where his legs will be lengthened like amit he wishes to remain anonymous and is going by the moniker rahu [Music] there is many cosmetics surgeries in the world thief surgery no surgery it's only like a few days you would feel uncomfortable but the most dangerous cosmetic procedure i would say this is it he already had limb lengthening surgery for his lower legs once to correct a birth deformity that operation left him with the ballerina syndrome that forced him to walk on his toes now he wants to be taller so he's having more surgery first to correct the ballerina syndrome and then to lengthen his thigh bones i've done the i would say the most scary looking one the external elizarov method on my tibia i never felt a worse feeling in my life [Music] the operation is costing rahul 31 000 us dollars that's on top of the 18 500 he paid for the previous procedure he is hellbent to get six inches and we had to use the internal device for thighs because we can't use external device on tiles against dr sarin's advice rahul has opted for a magnetic system different to the hydraulic device he usually uses and one he's not operated with before like the tibia operation a nail is inserted into the femur the thigh bone and the bone is then broken by a plunger but instead of screws to widen the distance between both parts of the bone a computerized magnet determines how far the two ends are pulled apart to allow the bone to regenerate it's not something that you can just say i did like even like an eye job or no job is more acceptable but this is something that's controversial like um i would say like a gender change you can get judged for it all your life [Music] away from the hospital kamna counsels one meter 72 tall ankita about her struggle to find a husband who can match her height hi it almost becomes like a selection criteria yes it is it is one of the most important criteria yeah your father is into making people taller so does he also make people short yeah there are a couple of people who have reached out to him to become short because being tall has become dysfunctional for them i think when you don't you don't find yourself fitting into the crowd you become the uh either very short or very tall and i think you start consider yourself as somebody abnormal and you try to correct that and become normal when we look at society at large it talks about these stereotypes in terms of you know a tall dark handsome man which is in one way problematic because people who are short are not any less better or people who are tall aren't any more superior [Music] it's been a week since amit surgery and he's not up for talking his wife did not take the news of his operation well and he's beginning to realize that his recovery will be slower than he predicted [Music] only one thing i cannot manage very well is the mental status some people they crack up like after a week or ten days right so you have to pep them up so things were going fine till he was the 3.5 centimeters and this thing and suddenly everything like went wrong for him the job pressure increased he could not handle it so it's normal it's not the doctor now has to persuade him not to give up and stop the lengthening process or it won't have been worth the pain rahul's surgery to extend his thigh bones is starting but the team is still trying to study the magnetic device that lengthens the limb now f9 now we have again when once we are going in domain we have to press f3 three times right [Music] the manufacturers of the device have sent in their own doctor to help but even she is studying the instruction manual we are doing a bilateral femoral lengthening at present for the cosmetic purpose with the infra medullary nail it's a electromagnetic nail which goes inside the femur and there is external device a person can lengthen itself every every day one millimeter so this is little technical surgery as with the operation to extend his calf bones a nail is inserted along the femur but when it comes to attaching the device that will lengthen his femur there's confusion the doctor isn't clear just where to break the bone 15 minutes go by dr sarin eventually decides to make a video call to the manufacturer [Music] [Music] an operation is underway to extend a young man's thigh bones at the sri balaji action medical institute in delhi but the procedure has not been done here before [Music] the lead surgeon dr sarin is seeking help from the manufacturer of the magnetic implant the most critical device required in the operation so we are doing at 16 15 or 16 centimeters from distal end what we don't have to do look into the magnet or something uh where do we put the transducer right now okay cheers the incision is made and the nail inserted dr sarin assures that none of it is guesswork and that the operation is going according to plan this is all well planned before only that we rehearsed one day before that what exactly what are going to be the steps in that yes there's sometimes like the screw size here and there five millimeters sometimes it doesn't go inside that you feel that like you know smaller screw is better or a bigger screw is better so we change the plan otherwise it's a very stereotype this thing we plan it beforehand and exactly do whatever has been planned but the delay means surgery on his other leg has to be postponed until the next day there are no regulations in india as to who should or should not get the procedure this has led to fears that cosmetic surgery is exposing surgeons to public prosecution but nowadays we have access i mean everyone is putting up their videos and if you look at these videos they sort of glamorize that that that particular surgery so all those young surgeons who are looking at these videos and learning and picking up from them they only see the best part you know they don't see they don't have any access to the complications of the things which can go wrong so that's the reason perhaps you know you are seeing a lot more surgical interventions or unnecessary surgeries which are being offered and being done with the the side effects of the complications happening surgery should always be offered only when it is required is needed so if there's a limb length discrepancy it is absolutely justified and definitely yes you can do anything and the people they won't go to the code also because you understand that yes this was something which was uh in a bad shape and you tried to correct it same complication happening in the case of cosmetic lip lending the lawsuits are going to be much more what is not the function it is the expectations of the patients which were not met with but dr sarin feels there's nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery irregardless of which body parts are being operated on see in modern medicine there is no ethics now like means or to be very frank those ethics days are gone then the cosmetic surgery should i mean the the finish half of the uh the population asian population is queuing up in korea to leave the asian looks and get into the european looks and getting cheekbone eyes and the this thing the eyes broad and thick like indians so so is it ethical or it is non-ethical see what are ethics or what are not ethics it's a it's a very delicate thing and it's a very thin line between them i would say it's a personal choice it's not my choice in another delhi suburb dr sarin's patients spend months recovering in this guesthouse it's here that they grow taller millimeter by millimeter amit's operation was two months ago after initially considering abandoning the procedure he has stuck with it but it's been hard stop talking to my family and stop talking to my friends because of course you have to be in that state of mind so that was my way of uh dealing with you know i'll get this thing through i'll get this thing through uh so yeah so there were definitely more lows than hives he had hoped to speed up his recovery time but instead he was gaining less height than he had expected so he asked for the frames to be removed a week earlier lengthening was not going as per my plan so i said that okay you took a decision it didn't go as per the plan let's recover the situation wherever it is right now let's get this thing removed at the start he lied to his wife that the surgery was for tennis elbow she knows more now but not everything she still is in the same present i haven't told her everything she knows that there was something and then yeah the limb lengthening has happened so she was asking me the other day have you gained a few inches of water so i told her that you know i'll get to know once i'll walk so today of course when i'll go you know and i'll stand up and all that down the corridor rahul has also turned the corner every day i just wake up have breakfast and i do some cycling i mean ideally as much as you can but i usually do 20 to 30 minutes i think more exercise is always better if you can do it while in the lengthening phase i mean most of the other patients here come to me and tell me or if it's hurting is it normal there are a couple patients here who have complications uh worse than mine so it's that is something that i also can advice on with his physiotherapist by his side amit is ready to get back on his feet [Music] okay [Music] [Music] that was great i'm telling you i mean i was just praying that everything is normal [Music] would want to you know walk normally and my wife and my family they've already started planning you know travel here and there you know so pretty excited amit gained 3.5 centimeters and rahul 12 centimeters overall these procedures even though they're safe and they're standardized what happens is that you look at it as the easy option i just get a surgery and get it fixed it's like plastic surgery it is cosmetic surgery for that matter but it's coming from a void within and if you don't start working on that void within it will be procedure after procedure and it can become an addiction at to some sort you may have got what you wanted for so many years you've got the height that you wanted if you're still not happy then what for aj patel the same desire came at too higher price the lesson learned came too late toilet foreign [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

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Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspectives, Undercover Asia 8, Undercover Asia, documentary, India, cosmetic surgery, limb lengthening, leg lengthening, body image, self image, height, social stigma, orthopaedic, Asia, full documentary, narrated, investigative, outsourced

Id: gRHpCXgdhR8

Length: 47min 24sec (2844 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021