Apparatus with reagents for detection of medical conditions

Details Apparatus with reagents for detection of medical conditions Apparatus with reagents for detection of medical conditions

1999-08-12

2001-03-20

O'Connor, Cary (Department: 3736)

Surgery

Diagnostic testing

Measuring or detecting nonradioactive constituent of body...

C600S573000, C600S584000, C604S358000, C604S362000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06203496

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the detection of a variety of medical conditions, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for the detection and monitoring of urinary tract infections and other medical conditions by personnel with limited medical training.
2. Description of the Related Art
The medical care of elderly or incontinent adults, especially those confined to long-term care institutions such as nursing homes, presents a variety of difficulties. Such individuals are generally in a relatively poor state of health and are often unable to communicate effectively with their caregivers. In addition, the personnel assigned to the care of such patients are often overworked and have limited medical training. In these circumstances, medical conditions such as diabetes mellitus or biliary obstruction often go unnoticed until they have become serious and often life-threatening. Urinary tract infections present a particularly difficult problem. Such infections often go unnoticed in nursing care facilities until the patients are hypotensive due to septic shock, and even if such patients are promptly taken to an emergency room, it is often too late to rescue them due to their generally poor state of health and the advanced state of the infection. Thousands of such patients die every year in this manner. It is thus highly desirable to detect incipient urinary tract infections at an early stage, so as to intervene before the condition of such patients becomes grave. However, the symptoms of early-stage urinary tract infections are not easily assessable if the patient himself does not communicate with the caregiver. Also, the limited time devoted to such patients by caregivers who often have limited medical training makes such intervention difficult. It is thus highly desirable to develop a method whereby personnel with limited training can easily detect and monitor these patients for such infections.
However, a simple method of doing this has not yet been developed. Methods are known, for example, for using external apparatuses for detecting the pH of vaginal secretions (U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,953 to Roskin, et al.) and for detecting the presence of bed sores beneath dressings (U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,905 to Flam). However, a simple, effective, and reliable method of easily detecting medical conditions such as urinary tract infections in long-term care residents who may be noncommunicative has not yet been developed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is, accordingly, an object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for detecting and monitoring medical conditions such as urinary tract infections, hematuria, and diabetes mellitus in mammals, particularly adult humans, and more particularly geriatric patients. Such method and apparatus may be safely and reliably employed in a short period of time even by personnel having limited medical training.
The present invention thus relates to a disposable apparatus, such as a diaper, pad, napkin, panty liner, or the like, having chemical reagents provided in the absorbent material in a region of the apparatus which comes into contact with urine when a patient wearing the apparatus urinates. These chemical reagents are well known to change color when they come in contact with urine containing abnormal levels of a substance, such as leukocytes, blood, glucose, nitrites, protein, ketones, bilirubin, or urobilinogen, or abnormal pH or specific gravity, which may indicate the presence of one or more medical abnormalities. One or more of these chemical reagents are provided in the appropriate area of the absorbent material of the apparatus during the process of manufacture of the apparatus. The chemical reagents change color when they come into contact with urine containing the one or more of the substances described above. Such a color change provides an easily visible indication of an abnormality in the urine and thus a possible incipient medical condition. Such a color change is easily assessed even by personnel having limited medical training, allowing such personnel to screen the patients in the facility and direct the attention of the trained medical personnel to those patients most likely to require attention, thus making the medical care of such patients more efficacious. In addition, because the diapers or other underclothing of such patients must be changed at regular intervals by caregivers as a part of the routine care of such patients, the assessment of such incipient medical conditions does not involve additional time-consuming steps, but rather simply involves the caregiver glancing at the inside of such diapers or underclothing as they remove them from the patients.


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