Background Compelled by the psychosocial implications of short stature, patients with short stature are increasingly undergoing distraction osteogenesis for cosmetic limb lengthening. To the degree that this is true, evaluation of the risks and benefits of this treatment are very important, but to date, there are few studies reporting on using distraction osteogenesis for this indication. Questions/purposes We reviewed a group of patients undergoing cosmetic lower-extremity lengthening in terms of (1) soft tissue challenges, (2) bone-related complications, and (3) functional and subjective clinical outcomes. Methods The study was retrospective by reviewing data from medical records and radiographs. Between 1983 and 2006, we treated 138 somatically normal patients with bilateral lower-limb distraction osteogenesis for cosmetic purposes at our center using an Ilizarov external fixator, of whom 131 (95%; 65 males, 66 females) had complete clinical and radiographic data a minimum of 1 year after treatment (mean, 6 years; range, 1-14 years) and were reviewed for this report. The mean age of these patients was 25 years (range, 14-68 years) and their mean preoperative height was 159 cm (range, 130-174 cm). One hundred twenty-four (95%) patients had lengthening of the tibia alone, of which 66 (53%) were monofocal and 58 (47%) were bifocal. Six patients (4.58%) had crossed contralateral lengthening of the femur and tibia and one patient (0.76%) had bilateral lengthening of the femur. The mean height gained was 6.9 cm (range, 2-13 cm), 7.3 cm (range, 3.5-13 cm) in males and 6.5 cm (range, 2-13 cm) in females. The mean lengthening, maturation, and external fixator indexes were 12 days/cm (range, 4.3-24 days/cm), 19 days/cm (range, 5.2-63 days/cm), and 31 days/cm (range, 12-78 days/cm), respectively. Results Forty-eight patients (37%) had 59 complications related to treatment. Thirty-seven were soft tissue related (28%), of which 17 (46%) needed reinterventions, and 22 were bone related (17%), of which 16 (73%) needed reinterventions. At final followup, the outcome was excellent for 72 patients (55%), good for 52 (40%), satisfactory for six (4.58%), and poor for one (0.77%). One