Bone Surgery

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 teams the first time they cost a knee programme: most of that weight is not implant-specific at all. Knee replacement instruments fall into two groups. The implant […]

A 1.6 mm trocar-tip wire, 150 mm long, driven at 400 rpm through the metaphysis of a distal radius. That is the whole of the fixation in a large share of paediatric and low-demand adult fractures, and it costs a fraction of a plate. The wire is the cheap part. What determines whether the construct

Before antibiotics, chronic osteomyelitis was a surgical disease treated almost entirely with steel. The dead bone had to come out, the cavity had to be laid open, and the instruments that did that work — long serrated grasping forceps and nibbling punches — were among the most-used items in any nineteenth-century orthopaedic set. Antibiotics changed

Mallet mass, striking-face material, tamp tip diameter, tip serration pattern. Four variables, and getting any one of them wrong turns a controlled impaction into a split cortex or a fractured graft bed. A bone impactor is the crudest-looking thing in an orthopaedic tray and the one most dependent on matched pairing. A 32 oz mallet on

Why does a fracture clinic still keep a rack of hand shears when there is an electric cast saw on the trolley? Because the saw only solves part of the problem. It cuts a groove; it does not open one. It is useless on a wet or freshly applied cast, hazardous over a bony prominence,