Dead Bone Surgery.

Walking around with a dead persons bone in your arm might creep you out, but Adam Johnson doesn't mind at all. The 6-year-old, nicknamed A.J., of Nassau, Bahamas, faced losing his right arm to an extremely rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma (ahstee-oh-sar-KOH-mah). About 2,000 cases are reported in the U.S. each year. Even rarer, his sister, LaToya, 10, had been diagnosed three years earlier with the same cancer--too late to save her left arm.

In 1998, a team of 11 surgeons at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., rushed to save Adam's arm in a revolutionary 9-hour operation. They removed almost all of A.J.'s upper arm bone, or humerus. The 20-cm (8-in-)-long bone contained a 13-cm (5-in.-)-long tumor, or mass of cancer cells. Then, surgeons transplanted a similar-sized dead child's bone in A.J.'s left arm--and a slice of his own fibula (thin leg bone) to keep his arm growing (see diagram above).

Using a cadaver's, or dead person's, bone to replace a cancerous or shattered human bone is called an allograft, and it is not uncommon. "We use cadaver bones routinely today," says Dr. Mark Scarborough, a bone-cancer specialist on A.J.'s surgical team.

But merely transplanting a dead bone into A.J.'s arm would have stunted his arm while the rest of his body grew. So doctors put a portion of his fibula that contained live, bone-growing tissue into the transplanted cadaver bone.

Nine months after A.J.'s operation, doctors called it a success. "A.J.'s dream of becoming a pro basketball player one day is still alive," Scarborough says. Doctors say the transplanted bone is growing right along with A.J. He threw a baseball for the first time last summer. How did it feel? "Great!" says A.J.

Building a New Arm

1 Doctors removed a tumor and all but one inch of A.J.'s humerus (arm bone).

2 Meanwhile, surgeons took out a portion of A.J.'s leg bone, or fibula. The fibula contained bone-growing tissue so that A.J.'s arm would continue to grow.

3 Doctors then inserted the fibula part into a hollowed-out section of a cadaver's humerus.

4 Then surgeons replaced A.J.'s humerus with the cadaver's humerus. Other surgeons reconnected the fibula's blood supply to blood vessels in A.J.'s arm, and reattached tissue to his new arm bone.