Patent Application
20250204622
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The disclosure relates to medical gowns and more particularly pertains to a new medical gown for facilitating access to a patient's torso.
Various medical gowns are available which include an aperture to provide access to a patient's torso, thereby facilitating attachment of a medical tube with a port which extends into the patient's torso via the aperture. Such medical gowns often have snap fasteners or other releasable fasteners to cover the patient's torso again while allowing the medical tube to extend through a smaller gap within the aperture.
However, some patients who want a stylistic appearance to the clothing they wear during medical treatment face a problem in doing so. Children and others often dress in a costume representing a superhero character, a fantasy princess character, or the like while receiving medical treatments. These costumes often have to be significantly adjusted or altogether removed due to the lack of such apertures described in medical gowns which would facilitate accessing a port in the patient's body for connection with a medical tube.
A new medical gown which comprises ornamental indicia similar to costumes and a closable aperture as described may be available to address this problem. Further, such a medical gown may do more than facilitating access to the patient's port and having an ornamental appearance. The ornamental indicia of these medical gowns may also serve a utilitarian function of facilitating the identification of the location of the aperture by the ornamental indicia. Further, the garment may be shaped to avoid substantially altering the ornamental appearance of the garment when the medical tube is received through the aperture.
An embodiment of the disclosure meets the needs presented above by generally comprising a garment shaped and configured to cover a torso of a patient. The garment defines an aperture between a first bounding edge and a second bounding edge on a front portion thereof. The garment also has a first portion and a second portion positioned opposite each other across the aperture. The aperture is positioned and configured to provide access to a port inserted into the torso of the patient. A closure is mounted to the garment and is operable to selectively join the first and second bounding edges together to close the aperture. The closure is configured to selectively define a gap between the first and second bounding edges smaller than the aperture when joining the first and second bounding edges together. The gap is sized and configured to accommodate a medical tube. The closure is positioned to selectively join the first and second bounding edges together in an overlapping fashion. The closure comprises a plurality of snap buttons, each of which has a first mating member mounted to the garment adjacent to the first bounding edge and a second mating member mounted to the garment adjacent to the second bounding edge. Adjacent snap buttons of the plurality of snap buttons defines the gap therebetween.
There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more important features of the disclosure in order that the detailed description thereof that follows may be better understood, and in order that the present contribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are additional features of the disclosure that will be described hereinafter and which will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto.
The objects of the disclosure, along with the various features of novelty which characterize the disclosure, are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure.
The disclosure will be better understood and objects other than those set forth above will become apparent when consideration is given to the following detailed description thereof. Such description makes reference to the annexed drawings wherein:
With reference now to the drawings, and in particular to
As best illustrated in
A closure 40 is mounted to the garment 12 and is operable to selectively join the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 together to close the aperture 28. The closure 40 is also configured to selectively define a gap 42 between the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 smaller than the aperture 28 when joining the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 together. The gap 42 is sized and configured to accommodate a medical tube 76 which is used to attach to the port 74 in order to deliver medicine, drain bodily fluids, or facilitate other medical procedures. The medical tube 76 may be an intravenous line, a catheter, or the like. The closure 40 is positioned to selectively join the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 together in an overlapping fashion. In this manner, the gap 42 is obscured from view, as the gap 42 extends substantially parallel or tangent to a section of the garment 12 rather than protruding perpendicularly to the section of the garment 12. In other words, one of the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 covers the other one, and view of the gap 42 is at least partially obscured by the covering edge.
The closure 40 comprises a plurality of snap buttons 44. Each snap button 44 of the plurality of snap buttons 44 has a first mating member 46 mounted to the garment 12 adjacent to the first bounding edge 30 and a second mating member 48 mounted to the garment 12 adjacent to the second bounding edge 32. Adjacent snap buttons 44 of the plurality of snap buttons 44 define the gap 42 therebetween. The closure 40 also may comprise a hook-and-loop fastener, a zipper, button-and-buttonhole fasteners, or the like.
In reference to
In reference to
In use, the patient 70 wears the medical gown 10 around the patient's 70 torso 72. To access the port 74 and attach the medical tube 76 to the port 74, the first and second bounding edges 30, 32 of the garment 12 are separated via releasing the closure 40. In addition to the ornamental effects of the indicia of the first portion 34 and the second portion 36 of the garment 12, the indicia also facilitate visually identification the location of the aperture 28. The first and second bounding edges 30, 32 of the garment 12 are joined together again via the closure 40 to cover the patient's 70 torso 72 and restore the ornamental appearance of the garment 12 while the medical tube 76 is attached to the port 74. The gap 42 is formed to accommodate the medical tube 76 without substantially compromising the visual appearance of the garment 12.
With respect to the above description then, it is to be realized that the optimum dimensional relationships for the parts of an embodiment enabled by the disclosure, to include variations in size, materials, shape, form, function and manner of operation, assembly and use, are deemed readily apparent and obvious to one skilled in the art, and all equivalent relationships to those illustrated in the drawings and described in the specification are intended to be encompassed by an embodiment of the disclosure.
Therefore, the foregoing is considered as illustrative only of the principles of the disclosure. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the disclosure to the exact construction and operation shown and described, and accordingly, all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to, falling within the scope of the disclosure. In this patent document, the word “comprising” is used in its non-limiting sense to mean that items following the word are included, but items not specifically mentioned are not excluded. A reference to an element by the indefinite article “a” does not exclude the possibility that more than one of the element is present, unless the context clearly requires that there be only one of the elements.
