Rosen pick
A long, fine probe-pick with a sharply pointed, gently curved or angled tip, without jaws or a cutting edge, mounted on a thin shaft.
How it is used
Used to palpate and gently mobilize the fixed stapes in otosclerosis (indirect mobilization), rocking it to break up the bony ankylosis; it remains in use today as a general probe-pick in middle-ear microsurgery, for testing ossicular chain mobility and manipulating the incudostapedial joint.
Clinical tip
Samuel Rosen revived stapes mobilization in 1952, building on Lempert's teaching; purely mechanical mobilization was later abandoned in favor of stapedectomy (1956) because fixation often recurred, but the pick itself remains a standard tool for fine palpation and manipulation in ear surgery.
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 2026-10-25.
Dates derived from the project's public version-control history on GitHub, not a live collaborative edit log.