Surgical scissors are excellent surgical instruments for cutting and for blunt cutting. Most individuals are right-handed which is why many surgical scissors are created by the manufacturing company this way. The thumb-ring finger grip provides the greatest stability in direction control & applies maximal closing, torque & shear power using your natural grip movement of your right hand.
For the greatest movement, have a neutral hand postion of the surgical scissors in all directions. The hand has minimal maneuverabilty & can rotate freely around the prone postion.
Surgical scissors can cut flaccid tissue effectively since the tissue is stabilized between the scissor blades. Surgical scissors cutting employs closing power, torque & shear to give an exact cut. When you push slice you give a more smooth cut along the surface. "chewing it" happens when you jagged & crusehd wound stuck between the blades of surgical scissors lacking in cutting force.
While cutting sutures with the scissor tips, look for the knot between the slightly spread blades, instead than underneath the surgical scissors. Try the left hand, someone else, or another stable structure as a fulcrum to steady the scissors when making delicate cuts or when held by antoher person cutting sutures. When cutting a row of sutures, hold the sutures in your left hand so that each one becomes taut as you cut it & so that the cut sutures are put out of the way.
By seperating the scissors while inside the tissue planes, blunt dissection can be achieved or by using the surgical scissors as a rake or probe. Blind dissection is sometimes useful between tissue planes away from vital structures.
for better maneuverabilty and visibilty use curved scissors, whereas straight surgical scissors provide the greatest mechanical advantage when cutting tough, thick tissue.
Surgical scissors should be used to give the most accuracy & control for the maneuver performed. Surgical scissors can be used for sharp cutting and for blunt dissection.
Surgical scissors are designed so that 3 force vectors are used in cutting: closing, shearing and torque. You then want to switch the forces from the hand to the shanks, then through a fulcrum to the cutting edges. The way the blades come together is by the closing force. Shearing is the force that pushes one blade flat up against the other while closing. Torque is when you use a motion to bring together the blade to touch the other blade. Most surgical scissors are made so that the gripping motion of the right hand effectively brings together these forces to result in accurate cuts.
When you cut, for correct control & direction, its crutial to make sure the tissue is correctly placed between the two blades and the security of the individual using the surgical scissors rest The wider the surgical scissors are opened and the more close the tissue is to the fulcrum, the more upon this. when the blades gently push the tissue away, bunching it ahead of the cutting action of the blades. The more obtuse the angle between the blades when you cut. The less the surgical scissors steady the tissue, then the less accurate the cut.
The grip that makes the best use of surgical scissor design to give the 3 force vectors will result in crisp, clean cuts. Surgical scissors are most usually held with the tips of the thumb and ring finger through the finger rings and your index finger places near the fulcrum on the shanks. This grip provides the largest "tripod" & therefore gives the best stability for direction control. The, closing & torque forces; this is the grip which provides it much better control. The middle finger and thumb grip which allows the index finger to be used to provide for the sides of the shanks. This 3-point grasp tip will provide you a more tiny tripod as opposed to the previous way, therefore, a little less stable.
Hold the surgical scissors in a cutting motion leaning forward, use your thumb-index grip. This grip uses only two-point direction control, this could casue an user to go off course. Though closing force is strong, this grip applies the least shearing and torque forces of all grips possible for forward cutting. With less shear & torque the blades will tend to "chew" rather than cut thick tissue cleanly.
The thumb-index finger grip used for cutting in a reverse direction. Such a grip applies three-point direction control with good lateral stability, however the torque force is nonexistent as well as the torque force, this reverse direction grip's main advantage lies in push slicing toward the operator.
The backhand grip is kind of a slight variation in the thumb-ring finger grip & is useful in cutting en route for the right.
All the grips we've covered thus far have a strong retracting force. the best grip is the thumb-ring finger for better direction, shear and torque forces. For reverse cutting, when your in direction control the grip is more stable. The prevouse 2 grips, when used in reverse cutting, you could lose control .
Surgical scissors isn't just a good medical tool for sharp cutting, for blunt dissection you may want to get the proper tips on the surgical scissors by spreading, ranking or probing. Surgical scissors have an added advantage over a clamp for blunt cutting, because alternating sharp & blunt dissection can be done without switching back and forth your surgical instruments. Blunt cutting spreads apart the layers of tissue. The cementing substance can be either scar tissue from a prior surgery or normal areolar tissue as in between fascial layers.
In the blunt cutting of layers bound by scar tissue you will come across hazard where the scar tissue traverses the cut in one of the layers. Blunt dissection of adhesions between layers proves risky when you have more tensile strength than the bound layers of the adhesions. Some scars could bring together bowel & fascia or parietal pericardium to the heart with greater tensile strength than is present in the bowel or in the interior the myocardium. You may not want to use blunt cutting with your surgical scissors in this case & result in an unintended enterostomy or entrance into the myocardium. This is why its risky for blunt dissection where you see some old scares come together with natural planes or where you see tough scar tissue already formed which is more compact than the structure.
Most cutting and blunt dissection with surgical scissors is under direct view. Blind scissors cutting & blunt dissection can sometimes be of enormous advantage & may be accurate & secure. Such blind dissection is done between well-established tissue planes in anatomic regions far away from important structures like big blood vessels & nerves. Blind surgical scissor dissection is an excellent way for opening a tunnel just beneath the dermis to put in a heterograft when you make an arterial venous fistula.
Blind surgical scissor dissection can also be put to advantage while doing a breast biopsy through a small circumareolar incision. It's difficult to notice a deep side of a breats lump; but, by palpation, using the left index finger as a guide, surgical scissors could be used to circumscribe & remove the lump.
While exposing major blood vessels by blunt dissection with scissors, be sure to express caution when doing this, because you could tear branches and small tributaries. If surgical scissors are used to spread parallel to a major vessel, concentrate on preventing any tearing of small side branches; if you spread perpendicular to the great blood vessel; focus your full attention plaques. Both methods, through having drawbacks, can be used if the inherent problems are understood.