Cheatle Forceps: Sterile Transfer Forceps Uses and Storage

The jar of methylated spirit on the dressing trolley, with a long pair of forceps standing in it handle-up, is one of the most recognisable objects in hospital practice. It is also the part of the practice that infection-control guidance has spent the last two decades walking away from.

The instrument itself is sound. Cheatle forceps do a job that nothing else does as well: reaching into a sterile drum, an autoclave chamber or a storage container and lifting something out without a gloved hand ever crossing the sterile boundary. What has changed is how the forceps is stored between uses, and getting that wrong quietly cancels out everything the instrument is there to achieve.

What the instrument actually is

Cheatle forceps are long, ring-handled forceps with shanks that curve upward and jaws that meet only at the tips. Standard length is 27 cm, with 24 cm and 30 cm patterns also in circulation.

Three design features matter, and all three are deliberate:

The upward curve. The shanks are bent so that when the forceps rests in a container, the jaws sit clear of the base and clear of the container walls. The tip that touches sterile items never touches the vessel.

The narrow serrated jaw. Fine transverse serrations grip a folded gauze pack, a drum lid ring or a light instrument without needing crushing force. There are no teeth — this instrument grips items, not tissue.

The ring handles. Grip is maintained with the fingers away from the working end, so the operator’s hand stays well outside the sterile field even at full reach.

Most patterns are made from AISI 410 or 420 martensitic stainless. Because these forceps live in wet conditions more than almost any other instrument in the department, the passivation quality of the surface matters more than the hardness. A poorly passivated shank shows rust freckles within months.

The jar is the weak point

The traditional method — forceps standing permanently in a jar of antiseptic, topped up when it looks low — has three problems that were never solved by choosing a better antiseptic.

First, a liquid chemical germicide at room temperature is a disinfectant, not a steriliser. The forceps coming out of that jar is at best disinfected, and it is then used to handle items that are sterile. That is a downgrade at the exact moment you need it least.

Second, the solution itself becomes a reservoir. Organic material carried in on the jaws builds up, evaporation concentrates or dilutes the solution unpredictably depending on the agent, and biofilm forms on the vessel wall at the waterline. Jars that are topped up rather than emptied, cleaned and refilled are the worst offenders.

Third, the wet tip drips. A forceps lifted out of solution carries liquid onto whatever it touches next, which wets a sterile drape or gauze and creates a strike-through path for organisms.

Modern infection-control practice therefore treats transfer forceps as a sterile item with a limited use window, not as a permanently-available tool sitting in liquid.

How to handle them instead

The workable version in most departments looks like this:

Sterilise, then store dry

Process the forceps through a normal steam cycle in a pouch or wrapped tray, and store it dry with the rest of the sterile stock. Open it when a transfer task arises. This is the same discipline applied to any other packaged item — see our notes on drums versus rigid sterilisation containers for how packaging affects the sterile window.

One session, then reprocess

Where a forceps is needed repeatedly during a session — a dressing round, a busy CSSD issue window — keep it in a dry sterile container for that session only, and send it for reprocessing at the end. Do not carry it over to the next shift.

If a jar is unavoidable, run it properly

In settings where dry-stored single-session use is not yet practical, the jar must be emptied, cleaned and refilled with fresh solution at a defined interval — daily, not “when it looks cloudy” — and the vessel itself must be part of the cleaning schedule. Record the change. An undocumented jar is an unmanaged jar.

Never let the tip rise above the handle

Whatever the storage method, the jaws stay below the level of the fingers at all times. Raising the tip lets liquid or contamination run down the shank to the working end.

Specifications

Choosing a pattern

Length is dictated by the deepest container it has to reach into. A 24 cm forceps that cannot reach the bottom of a tall drum forces the operator to tilt the drum, which defeats the point. If your department runs deep drums, buy 30 cm.

Check the tip meeting. Hold the forceps closed against a light — the jaw tips should meet cleanly with no gap and no crossover. A gapped tip drops gauze; a crossed tip scissors it.

Check the box joint or screw joint for play. Lateral wobble at the joint gets worse with every autoclave cycle and eventually makes the tips unreliable, which is worth understanding before you commit to a pattern — the joint type is one of the better predictors of service life across the whole tray, and the same is true for the items in a standard hospital instrument tray.

Care

Clean immediately, ultrasonic where available, rinse in demineralised water, dry completely and lubricate the joint before every steam cycle. Because these forceps spend their life around moisture, dry them properly — most of the corrosion seen on this pattern is water spotting that has been through an autoclave and become a permanent stain.

Inspect the serrations. Flattened serrations slip, and a slipping transfer forceps drops sterile items, which is a contamination event rather than an inconvenience.

Fizza Surgical manufactures transfer and sterilising forceps in Sialkot under ISO 13485, alongside the drums, trays and containers they are used with in our hospital holloware range.