Boy gets shoulder from elbow

A teenage cancer patient has undergone successful surgery to rebuild his shoulder using his elbow.

Tom Lemm, 15, from Pontefract, had his left arm amputated by surgeons at Leeds General Hospital because of a tumour at the top of the limb.

Doctors used tissue and muscle from his unaffected elbow to create a new shoulder in what is believed to be the first UK operation of its kind.



Tom's surgeon said the shoulder would be able to support an artificial arm.

In the operation, the whole arm and the shoulder joint were removed. The surgeons then used the elbow joint and tissue from the arm to reconstruct a shoulder joint.

A metal plate was then inserted into Tom's collar bone, and the new joint grafted on to the area where his shoulder was.