Surgery – Isolation treatment chambers – Incubators
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-12
2001-09-25
Lacyk, John P. (Department: 3736)
Surgery
Isolation treatment chambers
Incubators
Reexamination Certificate
active
06293902
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
The present invention relates to an infant care apparatus and, more particularly, to an improved means of mounting a wristlet to the wall of an incubator.
In the use of infant incubators, handholes are commonly provided in a wall or door of the apparatus to allow the attending personnel access to the infant without the need to open a large door where there would be created an undesirable effect on the internal environment. With the user of handholes, however, certain procedures can be carried out on the infant with a minimum of disruption to that controlled atmosphere inside the infant compartment within which an infant is positioned.
The handholes themselves normally have doors to access the infant and, when closed, obviously preserve the internal environment. Along with the doors, when opened, there is also commonly used a sleeve or wristlet that comprises a flexible material that is affixed to the inner peripheral edge of the handhole and extends inwardly so as to fairly tightly encircle the hands of the personnel so as to, again, minimize the disruption to the protective internal environment within the infant compartment when procedures are carried out on the infant.
In general, such wristlets are affixed to an external flange surrounding the periphery of the handhole. Such wristlets are commonly retained to that external flange by means of a elastic band the surrounds the external flange. One difficulty of such common wristlets is that the elastic must be relatively tight about the external flange in order to retain the wristlet in position. Otherwise, the continual inserting and withdrawing of the hands through the wristlets that encircles the wrists can cause the wristlet to pull away from the external flange and become loosened from its mounting to the wall of the infant incubator and thus the attending personnel have to keep reinstalling the wristlet to assure it is properly functioning.
Accordingly, to retain the wristlet in position, the elastic must currently be extremely tight about the external flange and, thus, the further problem arises that the user of the extremely tight elastic makes it considerably difficult remove and replace the wristlet for cleaning, replacement ad the like. As such, therefore, the difficulty is in the alternative, the elastic needs to be very tight to retain the wristlet in position, however, as a result, the wristlet is very difficult to remove and/or replace.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a mounting means for a wristlet that securely locks the outside periphery of the wristlet firmly to the structure of the incubator wall so as to assure the continued integrity of the affixation of the wristlet to the incubator wall.
As used herein, therefore, the description will refer to the walls of the incubator, it being understood that by wall, the invention is used commonly employed, as is the handhole, in the door of an incubator and which will be considered a wall for purposes of the following description.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention relates to a means of securing a wristlet to the wall of an infant incubator. As stated, the use of handholes are common with such apparatus and one handhole is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,392 of Koch. In the present invention, however, the wristlet is particularly adapted for use with a double wall construction of an incubator and a typical double walled incubator is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,824.
In such double wall construction, there is an outer wall and an inner wall and the flow of warmed air flows through the passageway formed between the outer and inner walls to provide heat to the infant. Also as is typical, the inner wall is removable so that the hospital personnel can clean the unit including the passageway for the heated air between the inner and outer walls.
Thus, in carrying out the present invention, there is a double walled incubator wall having an outer wall that may be fixed to the outer rim of the handhole. That handhole rim extends inwardly toward the interior of the incubator and has a further annular flange that is located inwardly toward the interior of the incubator and extends radially outwardly from that flange.
The outer flexible peripheral portion of the wristlet thus is elastic and is stretched over and seated against or around the exterior facing surface of the annular flange. The inner wall of the double wall of the incubator is affixed against the internal facing surface of the annular flange and thus traps the material of the wristlet between the incubator inner wall and the internally facing surface of the annular flange.
Thus, when the inner wall of the double wall construction is installed, the exterior peripheral portion of the wristlet is not only affixed by the elasticity of the wristlet itself, but additionally by being sandwiched between the inner wall of the incubator wall and the internal facing surface of the annular flange. By such means, the wristlet is firmly affixed to the wall of the incubator and not likely to come detached from the wall during its continued use. As an advantage, therefore, the wristlet is not principally affixed by means of the elastic outer peripheral portion so that the wristlet does not require the extremely tight elastic to maintain the wristlet in position affixed to the incubator. As such, the wristlet can be easily installed and removed, yet the wristlet is firmly affixed to its position to the incubator and is not readily disengaged by the act of the user inserting hands withdrawing an arm through the wristlet.
These and other features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent during the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the drawings herein.
REFERENCES:
patent: 2695605 (1954-11-01), Gibbon
patent: 4936824 (1990-06-01), Koch et al.
Dykes Christopher A.
Hundertmark Peter K.
Datex-Ohmeda Inc.
Lacyk John P.
Rathbun Roger M.
Veniaminov Nikita R
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