A bone cutter is a

surgical instrument A surgical instrument is a tool or device for performing specific actions or carrying out desired effects during a surgery or operation, such as modifying biological tissue, or to provide access for viewing it. Over time, many different kinds of ...

used to cut or remove

bone A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...

s. In addition to surgery, they are also used in

forensics Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and crimina ...

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

, and

dismemberment Dismemberment is the act of cutting, ripping, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise disconnecting the limbs from a living or dead being. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with ...

. Types of medical bone cutters include: * Unpowered – Unpowered bone cutting implements include varieties of

hacksaw A hacksaw is a fine-toothed saw, originally and mainly made for cutting metal. The equivalent saw for cutting wood is usually called a bow saw. Most hacksaws are hand saws with a C-shaped walking frame that holds a blade under tension. Such h ...

and

sabre saw The sabre saw (also saber saw) is a hand-held powered reciprocating saw A reciprocating saw is a type of machine-powered saw in which the cutting action is achieved through a push-and-pull ("reciprocating") motion of the blade. The original tr ...

. In many applications, the saw is used in specialised

jig The jig ( ga, port, gd, port-cruinn) is a form of lively folk dance in compound metre, as well as the accompanying dance tune. It is most associated with Irish music and dance. It first gained popularity in 16th-century Ireland and parts of ...

s to provide accurate, measurable cuts, e.g. in knee surgery. Specialized saws such as the

Gigli saw A Gigli saw is a flexible wire saw used by surgeons for bone cutting. A Gigli saw is used mainly for amputation, where the bones have to be smoothly cut at the level of amputation.Kojiro Wada, Kentaro Mori, Terushige Toyooka, Naoki Otani, Kazuya ...

, a cable made of sharp strands of wire, are also used in some procedures. * Reciprocating – Usually a powered rotary oscillation is applied to a specialised cutting implement to provide smooth controllable cuts into bone, for applications, from skull cutting to rib cutting. A

sternal saw A sternal saw is a bone cutter used to perform median sternotomy, opening the patient's chest by splitting the breastbone, or sternum. It is a reciprocating blade saw that resembles a jigsaw in appearance. It was invented and introduced by Dr. Edw ...

is a reciprocating bone cutter. * Sonic (or sound cutting) – The sonic cutter is still experimental, but its primary focus is to use high frequency, high amplitude sound to remove material (in this case bone), providing the ability to cut. Some tissue sonic cutters are being produced.

* Costotome – A costotome is a specialised rib cutter used to gain access to the thoracic cavity. It has two levers; the first one to be operated grasps the rib, and the second one cuts the rib.

References

Orthopaedic instruments {{Orthopedics-stub

See also

References