Bone wax
Sterile single-use stick, roughly 70% beeswax and 30% soft paraffin (or a water-soluble alternative such as Ostene), applied by hand to bleeding cut bone surfaces as mechanical tamponade.
How it is used
Hemostasis of the cut bone edge in craniotomy, sternotomy, or spine surgery, among other procedures involving bone work.
Clinical tip
It is cheap and effective, but is a permanent, non-resorbable foreign body associated with infection/granuloma risk; water-soluble alternatives can instead fail to seal frontal sinus air cells as durably, with reported cases of subcutaneous emphysema or pneumocephalus.
Sources
This entry is part of the Instriq catalog, researched and written per specialty from real web research -- never generated or invented without verification -- and reviewed skeptically and independently before publication. How this catalog is written.
History
Added to the catalog on 2026-10-15.
Dates derived from the project's public version-control history on GitHub, not a live collaborative edit log.