Surgery – Means for introducing or removing material from body for... – Treating material introduced into or removed from body...
Patent
1998-07-16
2000-08-08
Stright, Jr., Ronald
Surgery
Means for introducing or removing material from body for...
Treating material introduced into or removed from body...
604232, 604131, 604134, A61M 520
Patent
active
060995033
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a reloadable auto-injector, i.e. an instrument enabling the contents of a syringe to be injected automatically into the body of a patient.
In the pharmaceutical field, automatic injection devices or "auto-injectors" have been developed to facilitate dispensing some kinds of medication by means of a syringe.
An example of such an auto-injector is disclosed in Document WO 94/11041. That instrument incorporates a first device for causing the needle to penetrate automatically into the body of the patient, and a second device for automatically injecting the substance, the second device being actuated only after the needle has penetrated fully into the body of the patient.
As with most of the current auto-injectors, a drawback with that instrument is that it is a disposable system designed to be used once only.
Unfortunately, for ecological but also economic reasons, a need has appeared for reloadable auto-injectors enabling the same instrument to be re-used several times.
Various reloadable devices have been developed to meet this need, but they all have the particularities of being relatively expensive, of being quite complicated to use, and of sometimes only partially solving the problem of disposing of waste and of protecting the environment.
The main drawback with using such a reloadable auto-injector lies in that it is complex to operate as compared with a disposable auto-injector. Because all auto-injectors are actuated by compressed springs, it is necessary to perform several operations before the instrument can be re-used. It is necessary to open the instrument, to reprime or to recock the spring, to replace the empty syringe with a new syringe, and then to close the instrument. Those steps are often quite complex, and they are generally performed by unscrewing that portion of the auto-injector which carries the syringe, by recompressing the spring by means of a separate tool, or by means of a slide actuated by the user and acting on said spring, then by screwing back on the syringe-carrying portion of the auto-injector after the syringe has been replaced. In certain existing devices, the entire syringe-carrying portion of the auto-injector is replaced.
The various above-mentioned steps for recocking existing instruments are often too complicated for many users, and they can give rise to the auto-injector not being used properly, which can have potentially dangerous results for the patient, or else it can reduce the effect of the treatment.
Document DE-90 27 776 discloses a reloadable automatic injection instrument. That instrument includes a device for causing the needle to penetrate, which device comprises a spring that initially displaces the needle inside the instrument towards the skin of the patient, and a device for injecting the substance, in which device the same spring then displaces a plunger inside a tank containing the substance. The instrument is actuated by a push-button.
That instrument suffers from several drawbacks. It is complicated and expensive to manufacture and to assemble because of the high number of constituent parts. Furthermore, its device for causing the needle to penetrate involves displacing the needle inside the instrument under the effect of said spring. The disadvantage of that way of implementing such a device is that it makes the effectiveness of needle penetration (the needle preferably penetrating to the fullest extent) depend on the stiffness of the spring. Unfortunately, once the needle has penetrated, the spring must still be sufficiently tensioned to inject the substance. Recocking that spring is thus quite difficult and tedious, particularly for people who are weak. In addition, since that instrument is actuated by a push-button, there is a risk of the instrument being actuated accidentally, e.g. before it has been positioned against the body of the patient in the desired place.
It therefore appeared advantageous to the Applicant to develop an auto-injector of the reloadable type that does not suffer from the above-mentioned dra
REFERENCES:
patent: 5092042 (1992-03-01), Bechtold et al.
Stright, Jr. Ronald
Tebro
Thissell Jeremy
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