At 5-foot-6, Aaron Trinh noticed most of his friends were taller. He had been feeling self-conscious when he found an intriguing social media post.
“I was on TikTok, and I came across a reel showing how there was a guy from Turkey who lengthened himself like 6 inches, and I was like, “Huh, that’s pretty interesting. I didn’t know that was an actual thing,” Trinh said. “I got introduced to how people were doing limb lengthening for cosmetic purposes.”
Trinh’s online research led him to West Palm Beach. On the campus of St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Dror Paley is using surgical procedures to make people taller. His Paley Orthopedic & Spine Institute has become one of the world’s most active medical tourism destinations, attracting patients from 50 states and over 100 countries who come for medical and cosmetic purposes.
In late May, Trinh, 24, acted on his desire to be taller and underwent limb-lengthening surgery and recovery. It is an intense and expensive process, but one that has become more popular and accepted in the last five years. Trinh’s goal was to become about 3 inches taller, putting him solidly at 5-foot-9.
At the Homewood Suites West Palm Beach, a 10-minute shuttle ride from the Paley Orthopedic & Spine Institute, Trinh, a Houston resident, will spend three more months in South Florida. He says he feels a sense of camaraderie as he roams the hotel hallways in a wheelchair alongside others recovering from cosmetic height surgery. Trinh exercises two hours daily in the pool and works for at least an hour most weekdays with a physical therapist at the nearby Paley Institute.
“I am just making sure that my muscles are pretty loosened up and I am maintaining an active range of motion as I’m lengthening,” he said.
Not all of Paley’s patients come for cosmetic reasons. Some travel to West Palm Beach for limb surgery to correct a deformity or a mismatch in length. Some come to resolve issues with dwarfism. However, as patients increasingly share their results on social media, more are coming for cosmetic reasons. Netflix’s new film, Materialists starring Pedro Pascal, contributed to the leg-lengthening boom when the film’s star admits to his love interest that surgery added 6 inches to his height.
To make Trinh taller, Paley broke his femurs and inserted adjustable nails into the bone. The nails are pulled apart via remote control one millimeter every day for 80 days. Over time, bone tissue grows to fill the gap, and once fully healed, the limb is longer. Eventually, the nails are removed.
“This used to be done with an external fixator, and now I use internal rods that are self-lengthening,” Paley said. “We’ve come a long way.”
With stature lengthening, patients can typically gain between 2 and 3 inches in height per bone segment. However, the maximum height gain is generally about 6 inches. That would be achieved through two separate surgeries on the femur (upper leg) and tibia (lower leg).
“Typically, it takes about 12 weeks to get the optimal length,” Paley said. He uses caution not to overextend, which could lead to joint problems and nerve damage.
In November, Paley plans to use new technology — a stronger rod — that will allow patients to be fully weight-bearing while they are recovering and lengthening, rather than using a walker or crutches.
Paley said he and his partner, Dr. Craig Robbins, now perform more than 100 stature-raising operations a year — about two-thirds of their patients are men.
Like cosmetic procedures such as facelifts or breast augmentation, the surgery is not covered by insurance and can be costly — about $100,000, or as much as $200,000 for the upper and lower leg bones. Some patients will lengthen their arms, too, so they can be proportional.
“This is an expensive treatment, and like any plastic surgery, what limits its use is cost,” Paley said. “This is not a small outpatient procedure.”
On Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, and online forums, patients share their physical and emotional experiences resulting from limb-lengthening surgeries done by doctors around the world. Some complain of extreme pain, soreness and muscle tightness post-surgery. Others reveal a struggle to get back into shape or the psychological stress of whether to disclose their surgery to potential romantic partners.
The surgery comes with risks, including nerve injury and a loss of range of motion.
“The big problem is that if not done correctly and without the right infrastructure, such as follow-up and physical therapy, you are taking your life in your hands,” Paley said. “It’s very lucrative, so people have set up around the world who don’t know what they are doing.”
Now, 16 years after he opened the original Paley Institute in West Palm Beach, Paley, who speaks multiple languages, has steadily broadened his organization’s reach, establishing clinics in Warsaw, Abu Dhabi, and Medellin, and another is slated to open in Australia. He and Robbins travel to those locations regularly, but also have trained doctors who are replicating their protocols.
Still, he continues to draw patients to South Florida. Trinh will be at his West Palm Beach hotel until late October when his bones fully heal. He said he has experienced some nerve pain during his recovery in South Florida, but calls it “super-manageable.”
Young enough to enjoy his new height for decades, Trinh says the money and the five months of recovery are worth it.
“I feel a sense of great joy just seeing how much I’ve progressed. But what I really look forward to is going back into the real world where I’m surrounded by peers of my own age, and then I get to see that I’m not the shortest guy around,” he said. “I can actually talk to people on eye level, and I’m taller than pretty much 95% of the girls out there. I’m finally average height.”
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