Kreidler Soft Tissue Retractor, 21 cm – 5 × 20 mm Blade

The blade proportions decide what a retractor is good for, and 20 mm wide by 5 mm deep is a shallow, broad profile. It holds a long stretch of tissue edge while barely projecting into the wound, which suits a plane that opens sideways rather than downwards. A deeper blade in the same position gains nothing and presses on whatever sits behind the plane being held.

Soft tissue is the other half of the description. Unlike a bone retractor that levers against a hard edge, this one bears entirely on tissue that yields and bruises, so the load has to be spread rather than concentrated. Twenty millimetres of width does that. At 21 cm the instrument reaches moderate depth with the handle outside the wound, which is where a retractor held through a long procedure needs to sit.

Specifications