Proper retraction and exposure are of utmost and vital importance to the successful completion of any operative procedure. The instruments that have been used in the radical antrum and transantral ethmosphenoidectomy operations have frequently failed to give adequate and sustained retraction. In addition to giving poor exposure, the usual right-angled retractors repeatedly slip, requiring reinsertion, and cause a great deal of unnecessary soft-tissue trauma, with subsequent postoperative edema and ecchymosis.
In performing operations in the region of the antrum, if the procedure is of any duration, asistants holding retractors are apt to become fatigued, and with it again subsequent slipping, loss of exposure, and tissue trauma.
These new retractors have been devised in order to obviate these difficulties. They have been constructed so that the maximum point of retraction is at the tip of the retractor which would be placed just under the periosteum