Hadassah surgeons use 3D-printed implants to rebuild a leg lost to vanishing bone disease

Surgeons at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem reported in May 2026 that they had used 3D-printed implants to rebuild and lengthen the leg of a 24-year-old woman with Gorham-Stout disease, often called vanishing bone disease. The hospital described it as the first procedure of its kind in Israel. The case was reported by the Times of Israel on 4 May and described in detail by Hadassah International a week later.

Gorham-Stout disease is extremely rare. For reasons that are not well understood, the body reabsorbs bone, which can then disappear entirely. There is no cure. In this patient, earlier treatment had failed: the head of her thigh bone had collapsed into the pelvis, an old implant had migrated, and her leg was about 10 centimetres shorter than the other, leaving her dependent on a wheelchair or crutches.

The team, led by Dr. Omer Or, an orthopaedic oncologist and metabolic bone specialist at Hadassah Ein Kerem, with Dr. Gurion Rivkin, head of the joint replacement unit at Hadassah Mount Scopus, designed two custom implants from scans of her body. One rebuilt the missing part of the pelvis and the hip joint. The other replaced the femur and was built to extend. In the first operation the surgeons removed the displaced implant, restored the hip and gained 3 centimetres. Over the following weeks a home device used gentle electrical stimulation to lengthen the implant by about a millimetre a day, adding roughly 5 centimetres more, for a total of about 8.

About a year after the first operation, the extendable implant was swapped for a permanent one, adding a further centimetre. After intensive rehabilitation her leg is now close to its original length and she walks without crutches. Dr. Or said the case was unusual both for the rarity of the disease and for the solution the team found.