Wheelchair-bound Uzbekistan national walks after 9 years

A wheelchair-bound Uzbekistan national has been able to walk after nine years following a successful surgery at a private hospital in Gurgaon.

Fifty-five-year-old Guzal Ruzamatova had met with a traffic accident in 2006 and sustained a fracture of the shaft of her left femur (the thigh bone). While she underwent a series of surgeries, but it could not be corrected.

Finally in 2009, all the implants and external fixators were removed and the leg was left to heal on its own. As a result, the patient was practically wheelchair bound with barely any mobility. Patients contacted the doctors at Medanta Bone and Joint Institute (MBJI) and it was found that she had a shortening of about 12.5 cm of the left leg.

Doctors said that she had an extremely limited range of movement of just 20-60 degrees of the left knee. Additionally, the shoe raise worn by her was extremely heavy and did not allow for much motion. MBJI chairman Ashok Rajgopal and his team immediately recommended her for a segmental resection and a total knee replacement surgery, both cutting edge procedures.

In a surgery that lasted almost six hours, both the procedures were successfully performed on December 17.

“When we first met her, she was severely disabled and was a wheelchair bound patient. She had nine previous surgeries and multiple scars on the same leg. Her limb was a little over 12cm short and had an un-united fracture of the thigh bone. We did a segmental resection implant and restored about 11cm of her leg length without damaging any nerve or blood vessel, thereby restoring her quality of life,” said Dr Rajgopal.

Almost three weeks after surgery, on Wednesday, Ruzamatova is re-discovering the joys of an independent life free from the handicaps and is comfortably mobile albeit with a walker and independent in all her personal activities of daily living and can bend her knee normally.

According to the doctors, she has regained 11cm of length in her left leg basically making the length of both her legs almost the same further aiding her movement. With a small insole of 1.5 cm she can further do away with any need of wearing the cumbersome shoe raise in future.