Forceps are instrument resembling a pair of pincers or tongs, used for grasping, manipulating, or extracting objects, especially on the delivery of babies and delicate operations performed by surgeons, obstetricians or dentists. It is an instrument used for grasping, holding firmly, or exerting traction upon objects especially for delicate operations.

Hemostatic forceps can be called clamps, artery forceps, and hemostats. The main purpose of hemostats is to achieve hemostasis (arrest of bleeding). Most hemostats are available in different lengths, and curved and straight with serrated jaws (some also have toothed ends).

Soft Tissue Forceps are used for holding and retracting soft tissue. They have fine teeth or ridges on the jaws to provide a delicate grip without causing trauma to tissue. Like hemostatic forceps, they have ring handles and box locks. The different types of this forceps are backhaus towel, allis intestinal, babcock intestinal, lahey and mixter gall duct. Doyen intestinal forceps are right angled, sponge and consist of non-perforating towel clamp.

Soft Tissue Thumb Forceps are one that do not have box locks or ring handles. They have spring handles which are held closed by thumb and finger pressure. This is called a dressing forceps when it is used to grasp delicate tissue or wound dressing. They have teeth that will provide a more secure grasp on heavier tissue. The various types of it are adson, brown-adson, dressing, thumb with teeth, russian, cushing and debakey.

Bipolar Forceps are intended for use in general surgical procedures and are designed to grasp, manipulate and coagulate selected tissue. It is to be connected through a suitable bipolar cable with the bipolar output of an electrosurgical generator. Bipolar Forceps must only be used with bipolar coagulation current.

Serious possible complications may happen through the use of forceps. When forceps rotations are 90 degrees or more it may cause high cervical spinal cord injury in neonates will result to serious complication of forceps rotation

Forceps can cause multiple traumas and even death. The neonatal mortality rate attributable to use of the forceps was 34.9 per 1000. Fetal asphyxia played a major part in the aetiology of neonatal complications. The incidences of delayed onset of respiration (17.4%), birth trauma (15.1%), and abnormal neurological behavior–namely, apathy or irritability or both–(23.3%) significantly exceeded those in a matched group of babies born spontaneously .Babies on whom forceps were used, however, had a significantly greater incidence of abnormal neurological behavior even in the absence of fetal asphyxia (14.3%), and in all of these babies the abnormal behavior was transient and did not necessitate admission to the special-care baby unit. The results suggest the neonatal complications are caused by the forceps and not related to the process of birth itself. “Plastic Reconstructive Surgery” retrospectively identifies and characterizes patients with facial palsy related to birth trauma and describes the natural history of this disorder. This study revealed that 91% of all children who had suffered with facial paralysis were delivered with forceps. The incidence of additional birth injuries also was substantially higher among affected subjects than among the general population of newborns.