Masing Cartilage Knife, Curved 13 cm

Cartilage in the nose and ear is curved, and a straight blade meets a curved surface at a single point. Every millimetre of the cut then depends on the surgeon re-angling the knife, and the resulting margin is a series of short chords rather than a true curve. The curved blade of the Masing knife maintains contact along its length as it is drawn through, producing a continuous curved margin in one stroke.

At 13 cm this is a short instrument, held like a pen rather than a scalpel handle. That grip suits the scale of the work — trimming a few millimetres from a conchal graft or scoring the surface of a lower lateral crus — where the control comes from the fingers rather than the wrist, and a longer instrument would amplify tremor at the tip.

Specifications