World Precision Instruments MemoryFlex surgical scissors

World Precision Instruments (WPI) has introduced MemoryFlex surgical scissors, which are claimed to cut better, last longer and cause less trauma to tissue. The memory steel flexes, maintaining a high sheer bias on the cutting edge and enabling the scissors to cut all the way to the tip.

Most surgical instruments are made of hardened stainless steel that requires a significant amount of carbon. Though carbon aids in the stiffness, it is also responsible for the brittleness, corrosiveness and inflexibility found in all surgical instruments. Traditional scissors additionally fail because they get loose — when this happens, the individual blades splay apart, crushing soft tissue in between them.

Memory steel, on the other hand, is flexible and always returns to its original shape. While the rivet or screw (pivot point) in a pair of common scissors is the weakest point, the pivotal rivet is the strongest part of the WPI scissors. They can cleanly cut through 64 layers of latex, while other scissors on the market are not able to handle eight layers.