Tebbetts Alar Stabilizing Jig, 12.5 cm – Millimetre Scale

Alar cartilage is curved and springy, which makes it very hard to measure accurately. Held in its natural shape it presents a curve, and any measurement taken across that curve depends on exactly where and how it was taken. The jig solves that by flattening the cartilage first: pins positioned underneath press it into a plane, so the millimetre scale reads against a flat surface rather than a variable one.

A pin passed through the alar dome then fixes the reference point everything else is measured from, and the remaining pins act as guides for where the resection runs. What that actually protects is the rim strip — the band of cartilage left along the nostril margin, whose width determines whether the nostril keeps its shape afterwards. Taking too much is not correctable, so marking the line against a scale rather than by eye is the whole reason the instrument exists.

Specifications