Surgery is the most common treatment for achondroplasia symtoms.  Fluid build up in the brain often makes surgery unavoided in some cases.  The posterior opening of the skull is often widened to prevent compression of the spinal cord. 

There is also a surgical procedure used to counteract their stubby appearance. It is a height increasing surgery officially known as cosmetic limb lengthening surgery.  This is strongly illadvised by most physicians and has a plethera of negative aspects to it.  Along with the high cost, long recovery time, and extreme, there are many complications that can happen after the surgery is finished. 

 To understand the procedure we must kno about how bones work. When we are infants, many of our bones consist of cartilage and don't ossify until we grow older and they fuse into solid bone. When you are maturing, cartilage growth plates located on the ends of our longer bones are part of what causes our growth spurts.   Once we are through growing, there isn't anything we can do to lengthen our bones aside from surgery to increase height.

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Now we have learned about bones let’s discuss the surgery.  Essentially, your bones are broken. Metal plates hold your bones still, with a gap between. Gradually, your bones grow to fill the gap, which results in an increased height.  The many problems associated with this surgery include limb paralysis, bone twisting, bones breaking, and nerve damage.  In addition to this, having the surgery to increase height done at all can be immensely difficult. There are few doctors who are qualified to perform it. As the surgery is very expensive, finding such a doctor and making the travel arrangements to have the surgery performed will only make an already financially crippling procedure even more costly. With enough money and access to great medical staff, it can be preformed without complications, but still only able to add an average of 2"-3'' to a persons height.  Because of its costlyness, this method isn’t common and is only attempted by afflected people that are well off or have a wealthy family.^[2]

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