Why don they use more ceramic blades in surgery?
Well, first off that’s an engineering question more than anything else, but there are lots of drawbacks to ceramics as well from a purely physical perspective. Probably the most relevant reason they’re not used is that basically none of the advantages you’re listing are really relevant. Scalpels are one-use only, the blades are individually packaged and sterile, and they’re discarded after use. If one becomes blunt, you just throw the blade away and use another. So holding an edge longer and resisting rust aren’t really relevant, nor is the sharpness really, if you’ve ever seen a scalpel blade, you should know they’re plenty sharp, they go through skin, subcutaneous tissue, muscle, and fibrous tissue without much effort at all. As for the shattering, well, ceramics do that as well, and if a surgeon is using enough force on a scalpel that it becomes an issue, he’s doing something (probably several things) wrong anyway.
