Antral lavage was, for most of the twentieth century, the standard answer to chronic maxillary sinusitis. Functional endoscopic sinus surgery displaced it in high-income systems from the 1990s onward, and a good many ENT trainees in Europe now qualify without ever having performed one. The instrument did not disappear. It moved. Antral puncture remains in […]
Antrum Puncture Instruments: Tilley-Lichtwitz Trocar Guide Read More »
A paediatric grommet list is one of the shortest operations in ENT and one of the least forgiving. The surgeon is working down a canal 7 mm wide through a microscope, the patient is a three-year-old under a short general anaesthetic, and there are perhaps four minutes per ear. Every instrument that reaches the hand
Myringotomy Instruments: Knives, Grommets and Forceps Read More »
A 2.5 mm radial artery in spasm behaves like a 1.2 mm vessel. The lumen is there — the smooth muscle is simply refusing to let you see it. Push a graft into that, and the anastomosis is built on a vessel that will relax to full calibre an hour later around a suture line
Vascular Dilators: Garrett Coronary and Graduated Vessel Guide Read More »
A single-handed operator is closing a 14 cm flank laceration at two in the morning. There is no scrub assistant. Every throw of the suture means putting down the needle holder, picking up the scissors, cutting, and picking the holder back up again. Forty knots later, that instrument swap has cost more time than the
Combination Needle Holders: Olsen-Hegar vs Gillies Read More »
Open a general laparotomy tray anywhere in the world and you will find some combination of three retractors that look, to an outsider, like variations on the same idea: Roux, Morris, and Czerny. All three are hand-held. All three are used to hold an abdominal wound open. All three are named after nineteenth-century European surgeons.
Roux, Morris and Czerny Retractors: Deep Blade Patterns Read More »
Two spellings, two confusions. Catalogues list it as “Travers” and as “Traverse”, and half the buyers who order one actually wanted a Weitlaner. The pattern is distinctive enough that the mix-up matters at the sterile field, where a scrub nurse handing over the wrong self-retainer costs the surgeon a re-drape of the wound edge. This
Travers Self-Retaining Retractor: Sizes and Uses Read More »
Expert guides, procurement advice, and clinical insights from Fizza Surgical
Is flash sterilization still allowed? It is the question every new theatre manager asks, and the honest answer is: the word is gone, the practice is not, and…
A scrub nurse setting up for a laparotomy pours warm saline into a deep steel bowl on a ring stand beside the back table. Twenty minutes later the…
A primary total knee arthroplasty usually goes through somewhere between five and ten trays, depending on the implant system and how the hospital packs it. It surprises procurement…
A night nurse wheels a patient to the bathroom, one hand on the patient's elbow and the other on the drip stand. The stand carries two litre bags…
InstrumentTypical lengthMain job in a routine appointment Heavy-duty toenail nipper (concave or straight jaw)14–16 cmReducing thickened, dystrophic or fungal nails Fine-point nail nipper11–13 cmCorners, sulci, small and brittle…
A cow with a retained magnet problem, a ewe flock due for a mineral bolus, a calf that will not suck. Three different jobs, one family of tools:…
Many of the staining complaints that reach an instrument maker are not steel problems at all. They are water problems. A tray comes back from a hospital with…
A three-centimetre ventral midline incision on a six-month-old bitch. Linea alba opened, and the uterine horns are nowhere in view. This is the moment the spay hook earns…
InstrumentMain jobTypical form Teat cannula (milk tube)Drain milk past an obstruction or injured canalBlunt, round-tipped tube, 50–80 mm, side ports Teat dilatorGradually open a narrowed streak canalTapered probe…
The CBCT shows 6 mm of bone under the planned first-molar site. The sinus floor is flat, the membrane looks thin but healthy, and the patient does not…
Every other pathogen your sterile services department handles has a membrane, a nucleic acid, or a protein coat that steam at 134 °C will wreck. A prion has…
A porcelain-fused-to-metal crown on a vital second premolar, cemented eight years ago with zinc phosphate, needs to come off intact because the patient wants it re-used as a…
