Crow Coagulating Insulated Dressing Forceps, 23 cm – Tungsten Carbide

Combining grasping and coagulation removes a step that costs blood. Normally a bleeding vessel is picked up with forceps, then a separate electrode is touched to the forceps or the vessel — and in the interval the field fills and the vessel is lost. An instrument that conducts current itself coagulates the moment it has hold, so the vessel is sealed where it was caught.

The insulation is what makes that safe rather than merely convenient. Current run through a bare instrument will discharge anywhere the shaft touches — the wound edge, a retractor, the surgeon’s other hand — producing burns away from the intended site. Insulating the handle confines the current to the jaws. Tungsten carbide serrations hold that grip through repeated heating and cooling, which is exactly the cycle that dulls plain steel serrations and leaves a vessel slipping just as the current is applied.

Specifications