Von Graefe knife

[1] Use of the knife demanded a high level of skill and mastery, and was eventually supplanted by modifications of cataract surgery through the Kelman phacoemulsification technique that emphasized a small incision.

[2] Until the acceptability of the keratome-and-scissors method after the early 1940s, an essential part of cataract surgery was mastery of the von Graefe knife.

With increased popularity of sutures—especially pre-placed scleral groove (McLean) sutures, it became difficult for the occasional surgeon to develop the skill required to make an acceptable von Graefe incision.

In the 1980s, with the ever-increasing popularity of the Kelman phacoemulsification technique that emphasized a small incision and extra-capsular cataract extraction (ECCE), the keratome-and-scissors, large incision surgery technique combined with intracapsular cataract extraction (ICCE) became obsolete, although the use of the von Graefe knife still continued in India.

It is possible for an eye to recover from an intracapsular cataract operation that entailed a 170 to 180 degree superior corneal or limbal incision without the closure of the incisional wound by means of sutures.