Patent ID: 8905923

Claim:
A method of retracting a patient's pronator quadrator muscle and median nerve during a surgical procedure involving a wrist incision to repair wrist distal radius bone fractures, comprising: using a retractor having a hook portion, a handle portion configured for grasping by a surgeon or other medical personnel, a transverse wing portion between the hook portion and the handle portion, and a first intermediate portion between the wing portion and the handle portion, engaging the radius bone with the hook portion of the retractor, and applying pressure to the handle portion to engage and retract the pronator quadrator muscle with the transverse wing portion to provide an open unobstructed field for the surgeon in the wrist incision; wherein the transverse wing portion has a width sufficient to retract the pronator muscle away from the field of interest in the incision and a wing portion height in a direction transverse to the width is sufficiently small that the wing portion does not significantly engage the median nerve located superficially with respect to the pronator muscle; while continuing to apply pressure to the handle portion, engaging the median nerve with the intermediate portion of the retractor without contacting the nerve with the wing portion and applying a retractor force to the median nerve to retract the median nerve, the intermediate portion have a width smaller than the width of the transverse wing portion so that the retraction force applied to the median nerve is applied over an area smaller than an area of the transverse wing portion, to reduce the possibility of nerve damage.