Ceramic coatings for a highest performance of a zirconia scalpel: cutting tool for surgeons

Bistouries for surgical interventions were produced with zirconia stabilised with yttria. The quality of the lips of the produced wound is connected with the proteins wettability on the surface of the cutting tool. Zirconia exhibits lower wettability than satinelss steel commonly used to produce bistiuries. Further, a bistoury made with zirconia can be re-used many times after dry sterilization at high temperature. To try to improve the performances, coverings with thin layer of hard ceramic compounds (TiN, TiC, DLC) were performed. TiN covering has shown to give the best results. A series of veterinarian interventions were made on animals to be operated using the ceramic bistoury (covered and non-covered with TiN) instead of the stainless steel ones. The covered bistouries produced better results than non-covered ones; however both ceramic bistouries showed results far better than those coming from operations with stainless steel bistouries in terms of time, course and quality of healing of the operated site.