GROWING PAINS The Biggest Drawback of Height Surgery Might Finally Be Solved Leg-lengthening procedures could soon be way more popular. Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyA new leg-lengthening device promises to make the notoriously brutal height-boosting surgery less punishing. A patient recovers after surgery at the Institute of External Skeletal Fixation in Beijing, China. A later technique known as lengthening over nails, or LON, paired an internal nail with an external fixator. Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC ImagesLong before PMax promised to make recovery easier, the surgery itself had already entered the mainstream conversation through Celine Song’s Materialists.