Hey y'all,
So this is an esoteric one, but I'm the kind of person who did shoulder reduction already, so boney surgeries don't scare me that much.
I've been looking into this
[height reduction surgery] for a while now, mostly inspired by height dysphoria. I'm 5'11, which look isn't that tall, but it's still tall enough that it makes me feel unpleasant, clunky, and large, especially since I date men.
I've found a few surgeons that offer this. A lot of them don't really talk about it on their website, because I guess the demand is much less than limb lengthening. Which makes sense, because the only people who would do cosmetic surgery to become shorter would be trans women after all.
In particular, it's a fairly quick operation, but may or may not have a long recovery time. I've contacted a few surgeons, and I'm going to be seeing Dr. Kevin Debiparshad sometime early next year (probably January) in Las Vegas, NV to talk to him about it.
Some important deets:
- Out of the four limb lengthening surgeons I've talked to, three of them are fine doing it, and have previously done it in the past (Rozbruch, Debiparshad, Betz). One of them refused (Mahboubian).
- The consensus seems for femoral shortening without more extreme methods (aka inverse limb lengthening, which Rozbruch mentioned) is you can get about 6 cm max (2.36 inches). My assumption is more could potentially be done with tibial shortening, but I'm not particularly interested in doing more than that for myself anyway.
- Current cost estimates are around $30,000-40,000 for the procedure, similar to Leif Rogers' shoulder reduction (Eppley is cheaper). Though in this case all of them are limb lengthening orthopedic surgeons, so I do feel better that they probably know about bones better than Rogers or Eppley do. Rozbruch is kind of an outlier, because he quoted $125,000 which is the same price as his lengthening.
- Rozbruch so far on the high end, has quoted up to 4 inches height reduction via femoral shortening, through a kind of inverse limb lengthening with an intramedullary nail. Did not inquire further, because I'm not interested in that much reduction.
- This
may fuck up your proportions, similar to height lengthening. You don't want your legs to end up super short compared to your torso, or your arms super long, so I think for people in the normal-ish male height range, you probably don't wanna do more than 2-3 inches anyway.
- I can't really speak to the safety yet, since this is preliminary investigation. That being said, when this is done for non-cosmetic reasons, the results tend to be good. A few months later almost all muscular strength is recovered. I've done clavicular reduction, and my shoulder is mostly fine now 5 months later (exception being winged scapula, but I'm seeing an orthopedist tomorrow about that lol).
Thought this might be of interest to some people!
Lastly, quoted prices so far, compared to amount shortened:
Betz (Germany, EU) | 30,000 euros | ~6cm (2.36 inches) |
|---|
Rozbruch (New York, US) | $125,000 | 4 inches (with nail technique, long recovery) [10cm], 2 inches (no nail, shorter recovery) [5cm] |
Debiparshad (Nevada, US) | $30-40,000 (exact price not known yet) | ~6cm (2.36 inches) |
