The Nation - News from Nov. 26, 1986

Surgeons used steel rods, clamps and leg-bone grafts to create a section of lower spine to support a 4-year-old boy who was born with only a partial spinal column, a doctor said. Dr. Alvin H. Crawford, who presided over the complex surgery on Clifford E. McIntyre IV at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, said the operation provided experience in a developing medical field. The boy was born with only his upper spine because of a rare congenital defect called sacral agenesis.