Putterman Gladstone Transmarginal Clamp – Eyelid

A transmarginal clamp grips the lid through its entire thickness, and that is what makes it different from a forceps holding one surface. Eyelid surgery requires incisions on both aspects — external through skin and muscle, internal through tarsus and conjunctiva — and a lid held only on one side shifts when the other side is cut. Clamping across the margin fixes the whole structure at once.

Stability there also protects the marginal artery, which runs within the lid and is the structure most easily caught by an incision that wanders. Beyond cicatricial entropion the same clamp is used in Cutler Beard reconstruction for upper lid defects after tumour removal, trauma or coloboma, and in tarsoconjunctival flap procedures for lower lid retraction — all operations where the lid must be held flat and motionless rather than merely retracted.

Specifications