Liquid purification or separation – With alarm – indicator – register – recorder – signal or... – Transparent
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-09
2001-10-09
Savage, Matthew O. (Department: 1723)
Liquid purification or separation
With alarm, indicator, register, recorder, signal or...
Transparent
C210S448000, C210S450000, C210S452000, C210S455000, C210S497010, C210S499000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06299763
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autogenous bone and cell trap or filter and harvesting system and, more particularly, to a filter capable of collecting autogenous bone and precursor bone cells that are suctioned from a surgical bone site during a surgical procedure and can be harvested for future use, or use during the procedure, to help regenerate bone. This bone “slurry” may be used alone, or in combination with allografts, alloplasts or xenografts.
2. Description of Related Art
Various surgical procedures performed upon a patient result in fluid, solids and other bodily by-products being deposited in the body generally or mouth specifically of the patient. For example, the common ora/maxillofacial procedure for insertion of dental implants often results in the production and deposit of saliva, water, blood, amalgam and other tooth or root fragments and/or autogenous bone in the mouth of the patient. For health and sanitary reasons, it is generally desirous to continually remove these by-products through suction throughout the procedure in order to the improve the observation of the surgical site by the surgeon and to avoid infection which can occur if these objects are permitted to remain in the area adjacent to the surgical site or body of the patient.
Accordingly, aspirators are commonly employed to continuously remove by-products produced during oral/maxillofacial and general surgical and non-surgical procedures. An aspirator is typically embodied as a narrow-tipped, hand held tube connected to a flexible hose. The hose is attached to an electric motor driven suction system which draws air through the hose forming a vacuum, such that the tip of the hand-held tube continuously removes the undesirable solid, liquid and gaseous by-products resident at the surgical or other procedure site in the patient's mouth or body.
Though many of the products removed from the patient's body during these procedures are infectious and generally undesirable, osseous materials, such as autogenous bone, are an exception. Autogenous bone carries gross bone particles, stem cells and other blood elements necessary for regeneration of new bone. Accordingly, the separation and collection of the autogenous bone (also known as “bone harvesting”) resulting from surgical, medical and dental procedures is a desirable goal.
The types of bone harvesting devices presently available utilize an existing aspirator system in conjunction with a filtering device to capture autogenous bone traveling in the air flow induced by the suction system. One such filter comprises a solid, non-transparent body which connects directly to the aspirator tip and traps osseus bone in an enclosed mesh basket. The autogenous bone is thereafter collected by scraping the basket to dislodge the autogenous bone. Because of the basket shape of the mesh, it is difficult to remove all of the autogenous bone captured in the mesh. Also, because the body of the filter is non-transparent, it is impossible to know when the mesh basket has reached its capacity in instances where a large amount of autogenous bone is collected. Other bone harvesting devices utilize generally flat, peel-back mesh filter elements. (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,134 issued to Arab) Such devices can be used only once and are difficult to sterilize, subject to clogging and contamination with bad elements that would normally pass through the filter and are therefore costly to utilize.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly the present invention is directed to providing a transparent and disposable apparatus, as well as a method for efficiently trapping and collecting autogenous bone removed from a patient by an aspirator system during medical or dental procedures in which autogenous bone along with its marrow elements may be dislodged.
In an illustrative embodiment of the present invention, an autogenous bone trap or filter has a substantially cylindrical housing or body portion with narrower hollow cylindrical projections extending longitudinally from each end thereof. These projections allow the standard hollow flexible tubing used in aspirator systems to be connected to each end of the cylindrical housing body. The tubing at a proximal or inlet end of the cylindrical body extends to a conventional aspirator tip and the tubing at the distal or outlet end extends to the aspirator suction motor. As a result, the bone trap may be placed anywhere between the tip and the aspirator suction motor.
A cylindrically-shape mesh of lesser diameter than the cylindrical body or housing has a removable solid base mounted at its proximal end and an open circular area at its distal end. The base is in the form of a tray with a peripheral ring and a raised disk-shaped surface mounted on the ring by a connecting circular wall. The cylindrical body of the trap is made as two sections which can be separated so the mesh and base can be placed within the main body portion of the suction trap so that the open end of the mesh faces the inlet of the bone trap. Accordingly, when flow is induced by the suction system, the liquids, solids and gases which are captured by the aspirator tip are forced to pass along the tubing from the tip to the inlet projection of the cylindrical body, into the open end of the cylindrical mesh, laterally through the mesh to the cylindrical body wall, along the wall to the outlet projection and through further tubing to the suction motor. The mesh is appropriately sized such that autogenous bone particles and cells that are too large to pass through the mesh are collected on its inner wall and on the surface of the tray that blocks the end of the mesh.
Because the body of the bone trap is transparent, the amount of autogenous bone collected by the mesh may be visually monitored by the user of the present invention. This prevents clogging and contamination on by elements that would normally pass through.
When the procedure is completed, the two housing sections of the cylindrical body are manually separated. Before and after the cylindrical mesh and tray are removed, a circularly-shaped plunger device is then utilized to scrape the inner walls of the cylindrical mesh. The plunger is moved into the open end of the mesh and toward the tray, such that substantially all of the autogenous bone and marrow elements are removed from the mesh inner wall and pressed onto the tray. The tray is removed manually and the compressed autogenous bone is left on the surface of the sample tray, where it can be conveniently and effectively removed and used either alone, or in combination with other materials (e.g. alloplasts, allogafts or xenografts).
REFERENCES:
patent: 4062781 (1977-12-01), Strauss et al.
patent: 4601820 (1986-07-01), Leason
patent: 5100541 (1992-03-01), Kallenbach
Ashman Arthur
Darby & Darby
Savage Matthew O.
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