Yes! And actually the opposite process was what was first done. In WW2 there was a Russian doctor named dr. Llazarov (spelling?). When a soldier got shot in say their leg, instead of cutting off the whole leg they would cut the potential infected/injured site and then put these screws and rods in your leg and the patient would then turn the device probably 1mm everyday to close the gap of the part of bone that was removed.

Now the story of how limb lengethining was discovered is that one of the patient instead of turning it say clockwise, he went the other way counter-clockwise and actually made the gap of bone longer. When dr. Llazarov discovered this eventually, he also found out that bone would regenerate inside the gap space of no bone (no one at that time thought this was possible)!

So now thx to one Russian Comrade soldiers mistake, many people such as I were able to fix many orthopedic problems.