Surgery – Liquid medicament atomizer or sprayer – Rotating
Patent
1981-11-09
1984-06-05
Recla, Henry J.
Surgery
Liquid medicament atomizer or sprayer
Rotating
12820014, 12820315, 261 92, 261DIG65, A61M 1500
Patent
active
044522398
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to medical nebulising apparatus for inhalatory use. In this specification, the term "nebulisation" is intended to include the formation of a spray from a powder as well as from a liquid.
In the medical field, the inhalation of nebulised drugs is an accepted way of treating various medical conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, cystic fibrosis and other conditions of the respiratory tract. Existing medical nebulisers are not easy to use by all patients. They are expensive, bulky and require a separate compressed air or oxygen supply, e.g. from a compressed air container or from an electric compressor device. A patient, therefore, is unlikely to have or carry his own nebuliser and has to visit a hospital for inhalation treatment.
It has been proposed to use a rotatable disc for dispersing particles in a medical nebuliser. The material is fed in an axial direction onto the disc to disperse the particles in a large chamber and an airstream is independently generated to carry particles out of the chamber. There is, therefore, a generation of a large proportion of large particles and the apparatus is massive.
One common way of producing a spray is by the use of a pressurised can, commonly used, for example, for such purposes as paint spraying, air fresheners and insecticide sprays. Although these cans are readily portable and are used as inhalation devices, they suffer several drawbacks. They require a pressurised carrier gas, which itself is undesirable for environmental reasons and the pressure is excessively high, with the result that the spray particles impact in the mouth and coalesce. The devices are not re-usable and they need a very high degree of coordination and effort by the patient.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides medical nebulising apparatus, comprising a housing including a chamber provided with a reservoir for material to be nebulised. The housing has an outlet portion for the nebulised material, a passage for the nebulised material between the chamber and the outlet portion, and nebulising means in the form of a driven rotatable member for effecting nebulisation. The rotatable member has its path of rotation passing through the reservoir to pick up material. The passage communicates with the chamber at a port radially spaced from the path of rotation and positioned in the path of particles flung from the rotatable member. The chamber is shaped to direct particles to the port in an air stream centrifugally generated by the rotatable member.
The rotatable element is preferably in the form of a rotatable disc and the chamber preferably has a circular peripheral wall about the disc periphery. The passage from the chamber may be tangential to the chamber.
The air inlet is preferably an aperture in a wall of the chamber and a shutter may be provided to control the area of the inlet. It is preferred that a scale is provided to indicate the position of the shutter and, therefore, provide predetermined settings for the inlet area. The size of the inlet area determines the rate of delivery of the nebulised material by controlling the rate of admission of air to the chamber during operation.
The passage between the chamber and the outer portion preferably includes a baffle arrangement to assist in controlling the particle size at the outlet by returning larger particles to the chamber.
Apparatus according to the invention can be made sufficiently small for carrying in a pocket or handbag and can provide a fine mist with particles not exceeding 30.mu. or even particles not exceeding a size as low as 15.mu..
REVIEW OF PRIOR ART
The use of a rotating wheel for flinging particles into a gas stream is a very old practice in some industries, for example, for comminuting metals and electrostatic powder coating. These industrial processes are described in the following U.K. patent specifications, which have been located by searching, since the invention was made.
U.K. Pat. No. 1,173,380 describes an apparatus for developing ele
REFERENCES:
patent: 1202877 (1916-10-01), Morgan
patent: 2674999 (1954-04-01), Cox
patent: 3229450 (1966-01-01), Stern
patent: 3711071 (1973-01-01), Urbanowicz
patent: 4025070 (1977-05-01), McGill et al.
patent: 4147166 (1979-04-01), Hansen
Recla Henry J.
Reichle Karin M.
Schaffer Murray
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