Textiles: knitting – Fabrics or articles – Articles
Utility Patent
1995-05-17
2001-01-02
Worrell, Danny (Department: 3741)
Textiles: knitting
Fabrics or articles
Articles
C066S176000, C002S123000
Utility Patent
active
06167731
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to protective body garments such as commonly worn by surgical and other medical personnel, especially disposable surgical gowns, and relates more particularly to the provision of a single-ply circularly-knitted cuff for use in such garments to encircle body openings in the garment, such as the wrist openings at the end of the sleeves of a surgical gown.
As is well known, it is of paramount importance in the performance of surgical and many other medical procedures that sterile conditions be maintained and, toward this end, physicians, nurses and other medical personnel participating in or present during such procedures virtually always wear sterilized protective body garments over substantially the entirety of the person's body, along with taking other precautions and sterility measures, to minimize the risk of transmitting bacteria, germs, diseases and the like between the patient and the medical personnel.
One common protective garment of this type is a surgical gown worn about the upper body and typically comprising a torso-encircling main body portion, normally opening along its back panel with tie strings or the like to close the garment about the wearer's body, and a pair of sleeves extending from opposite sides of the main body portion for covering the wearer's arms.
For enhanced maintenance of sterility, it is desirable to provide such surgical gowns with cuff portions at the ends of the sleeves to conform to the wearer's wrists. A knitted cuff, commonly of a tubular circularly-knitted fabric, is preferable for this purpose.
One on-going problem continually facing the medical industry is how to accomplish the overriding objective of continuing to improve and advance the sterility of surgical and other medical environments while at the same time avoiding or at least minimizing unnecessary increases in medical and health care costs. Toward this end, the medical industry has turned in recent years to the use of disposable one-time or limited use surgical gowns which can be manufactured inexpensively from non-woven textile materials and eliminate the necessity and expense attendant to other garments of cleaning and sterilizing the garments after each use.
While disposable surgical gowns and like protective medical garments have proved to be an effective cost-saving measure, concern has developed that the material and fabrication costs associated with the provision of knitted cuffs on such garments is disproportionately high in relation to the remainder of the garments.
Typically, the knitted cuff on disposable surgical gowns is formed of a circularly-knitted rib-type textile fabric which is fabricated in extended lengths and made into individual cuffs during the gown fabrication process by cutting the circular fabric to discrete lengths, everting the cut fabric portion upon itself into a double-ply cuff to provide a finished edge at the fold line thusly produced, and then sewing the adjacent cut edges to the end of a sleeve.
Although a two-ply cuff is undesirable in that the dual thickness of fabric and the labor involved in the cutting and sewing process contributes to increased costs in the garment, the two-ply cuff is considered necessary from a functional standpoint to provide a finished end edge to the cuff so that it will not unravel and potentially shed fibers that may, for example, find their way into a surgical site.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved knitted cuff which is suitable for use in disposable surgical gowns and like protective medical garments and which is largely of a single-ply construction to reduce the attendant costs of manufacturing such garments. A further object of the present invention is to provide an improved cuff which will additionally reduce and simplify inventory and labor costs and procedures involved in the fabrication of such garments. The present invention also seeks to provide an improved method of fabricating disposable surgical gowns and the like by the use of the improved cuff.
Basically, the cuff of the present invention may be utilized in substantially any protective body garment of the type commonly worn by surgical and other medical personnel which comprises a main body for covering a portion of the wearer's body and an opening in the main body for extension therethrough of an extremity of the wearer's body. Typically and preferably, the cuff of the present invention will be utilized in disposable surgical gowns of the type having a main body robe portion for covering the wearer's torso and arms, with the robe portion having a pair of arm sleeves terminating at wrist openings therein for extension respectively therethrough of the wearer's arms. However, the invention is equally applicable as well to cuffs on other medical garments, e.g., on the leg portions of lower body medical garments.
In any case, a cuff according to the present invention is affixed to the garment body in surrounding relation to the opening or openings thereof. In accordance with the present invention, each such cuff basically comprises a circularly-knitted fabric tube having a main cuff body portion of a single-ply knitted construction terminating at an outer end of the cuff in an integral turned welt forming a finished cuff edge.
In the preferred embodiment, the circularly-knitted fabric tube of each cuff comprises a plurality of body yarns and an elastic yarn formed in needle loops extending in circumferential courses and axial wales. The turned welt of each cuff comprises a welt beginning course, a welt ending course, and a plurality of intervening courses, the welt beginning and ending courses being connected with one another by a set of connecting needle loops formed in selected spaced wales, e.g., every fourth wale, and the intervening courses comprising needle loops formed only in wales other than the selected spaced wales and in yarn floats across such wales.
The main cuff body portion preferably includes at least selected courses which have needle loops formed in every wale and, thus, the main cuff body portion is of a greater diameter than the turned welt of the cuff as a result of the absence of needle loops in the selected spaced wales of the welt's intervening courses, thereby forming the cuff of a tapered configuration.
For example, in the preferred embodiment, the main cuff body portion of each cuff comprises a first annular region adjacent the turned welt having courses formed of alternating needle loops and yarn floats and courses formed entirely of successive needle loops appearing in every wale, and a second annular region adjacent the first annular region having courses formed of alternating needle loops and tuck stitches and courses formed entirely of successive needle loops appearing in every wale.
It is preferred to form alternating and intervening courses of the circularly-knitted fabric tube with S-twist and Z-twist yarns so as to cooperatively provide a flattening effect on the fabric tube.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the single-ply cuff as described above enables a unique method for fabricating disposable and like surgical gowns to be carried out without the heretofore conventional necessity of cutting and folding a cuff preparatory to sewing to a gown. More specifically, in accordance with the present method, surgical gowns are fabricated by initially fabricating main body robe portions for the surgical gowns, with each robe portion having a pair of arm sleeves terminating at respective wrist openings therein. Then, a plurality of discrete individual annular cuff blanks are knitted for the surgical gowns on a circular knitting machine. Basically, the knitting of each blank comprises the steps of forming on the circular knitting machine an annular turned welt presenting a finished cuff edge, knitting integrally to the welt an annular main cuff body portion of a single-ply knitted construction, and then discharging from the kn
Euliss Melvin
Farrell Roscoe M.
Lopez Francisco G.
Johnson & Johnson Medical Inc.
Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman
Worrell Danny
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