Surgeons use cadaver bone to save 6-year-old boy's cancerous arm.

Surgeons used a bone from a cadaver to save the cancerous right arm of a 6-year-old boy in a pioneering transplant operation that should allow the limb to grow along with the child.

Nine months after his surgery, Adam Johnson of Nassau, Bahamas used the arm to toss around a baseball during a news conference held June 21 at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. Last September, doctors removed most of Adam's humerus (upper arm bone) because of a large tumor. They replaced it with the humerus from a dead child, fusing it with a piece of Adam's own fibula, the thin bone in the lower leg.

The surgery marked the first time a live bone with its cartilage and blood supply intact was combined with a cadaver bone. According to the surgeons, this combination, held together with a titanium plate, should ensure that the arm will grow with Adam, and that he will have a full-size arm as an adult.