Patent Application
20070209951
The present invention relates to a multi-chamber container, and more particularly, to a multi-chamber container which accommodates two or more solutions to enable the solutions to be mixed.
Conventionally, in the case of mixing two or more solutions, in order to prevent the solutions from deteriorating with time due to the interaction, the solutions have been mixed and adjusted immediately before administration in medical fields. However, such mixing of solutions immediately before administration has defects such as contamination with microorganisms and/or intrusion of a foreign substance, insufficient mixing, inability of prompt administration and the like. Therefore, such a multi-chamber container is currently being developed that the container is provided with barrier which separates the solutions, such as a seal which can be peeled by application of pressure, and that each of a plurality of chambers partitioned by the barrier is filled with a respective unmixed solution. In this multi-chamber container, the barrier is released immediately before administration to mix the solutions.
As a method of releasing the barrier to mix solutions in such a multi-chamber container, there are a method of pressing a filling chamber by hand or the like to decrease the volume of the chamber, and thereby releasing the barrier by pressure of the solution inside the chamber to mix the solutions, another method of providing an injection plug extending from a filling chamber to another filling chamber through the barrier, and opening the injection plug to mix the solutions, and the like.
In such mixing methods, opening operation (pressing or opening of the plug) is necessary independently of mounting operation in mounting the container to a predetermined device to administer. A possibility thereby arises that solutions are administered without performing the opening operation. Further, it is difficult to confirm that the barrier is released and the solutions are mixed, making it difficult to find that the opening operation is not performed. Furthermore, in a type of opening a plug to mix solutions, the opened plug is left in the chamber, resulting in a problem of intrusion of the foreign substance.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a multi-chamber container that prevents an occurrence of forgetting to mix solutions while enabling intrusion of a foreign substance to be prevented.
A multi-chamber container of the invention is a multi-chamber container which accommodates a plurality of solutions, is divided into a plurality of filling chambers by an opening preventing portion, and has a container body with the filling chambers filled with the solutions respectively, and a covering member that covers at least one of the filling chambers of the container body, where the covering member has a pair of rigid members that sandwich the opening preventing portion from the outside, and seal portions provided to close the pair of rigid members.
An embodiment of the present invention will specifically be described below with reference to accompanying drawings.
The multi-chamber container as shown in
The seal portion 13 has sufficient pressure resistance to a pressure in the normal direction (direction of the arrow A) to the sheet. In other words, the pressure from the direction of the arrow A is dispersed over the entire container body 1, and the seal portion 13 is thereby not peeled. Meanwhile, the seal portion 13 has a property of easily peeling against the force in the vertical direction (direction of the arrow B) of the sheet. By using such a seal portion 13 as an opening preventing portion, when the pressure in the direction of the arrow B is applied to the seal portion 13 by applying the pressure to at least one of the filling chambers 11, 12, the seal portion 13 is peeled to open the communication between the filling chambers 11, 12, and the solutions filled into the chambers 11, 12 are mixed.
The container body 1 has a hole 14 to be hanged in a stand during administration of the solutions at its one end (upper position in the figure). Further, the container body 1 has a cock 15 at the other end (lower position in the figure). The cock 15 is sealed by a rubber stopper until a hollow needle is inserted.
In addition, generally used materials may be used as a material for the container body 1.
The multi-chamber container as shown in
The rigid members 21 have sufficient rigidity to hold the seal portion 13 from the outside to enable the cover 2 to be attached to the container body 1. As the rigid members 21, plates and the like may be used which can pinch the seal portion 13 (thin portion of the container body 1) along the seal portion 13. It is preferable that the rigid members 21 are light in weight as possible. Accordingly, as a material for the rigid members, for example, paper, plastic and the like may be used. The rigid members 21 are attached to the internal side of the cover 2 by adhesive or the like to come into contact with the seal portion 13. Further, as in an aspect as shown in
The seal portions 22 are provided in regions outside the rigid members 21 in the cover 2. The seal portions 22 have adhesion of the extent to which the seal portions 22 peel by an increase in thickness of the seal portion 13 when the seal portion 13 peels to cause the filling chambers 11, 12 to be opened in therebetween and increases its thickness. In other words, the adhesion and shape of the seal portions 22, and positions of the seal portions 22 in the cover 2 are set so as to hold the cover when the filling chambers 11, 12 are not opened in therebetween, while causing the cover 2 to easily drop when the filling chambers 11, 12 are opened in therebetween and the thickness of the seal portion 13 increases.
The seal portions 22 may be formed of a double-faced tape, the cover 2 may be melted to form the seal portions 22, or engaging portions may be provided at contact portions (end portions) of the cover 2 and engaged to form the seal portions 22.
In the case of attaching the cover 2 to the container body 1, prepared first is the cover 2 (for example, film or sheet) as shown in
Thus, the aforementioned multi-chamber container is configured so that the filling chamber 12 is covered with the cover 2 when the filling chambers 11, 12 are not opened in therebetween, and that the cover 2 drops when the filling chambers 11, 12 are opened in therebetween and the seal portion 13 increases its thickness. Therefore, when the filling chambers 11, 12 are not opened in therebetween, the cock 15 of the container body 1 is covered with the cover 2. Hence, in this state, since the cock 15 is covered with the cover 2, it is logically not possible to inject a hollow needle into the cock 15 to use the container. In other words, the container cannot be used with the filling chambers 11, 12 not opened in therebetween. It is thus possible to reliably avoid an occurrence of forgetting to mix the solutions. Further, according to this configuration, it is possible to prevent intrusion of a foreign substance.
In an aspect as shown in
The multi-chamber container as shown in
In the multi-chamber containers as shown in
The multi-chamber container as shown in
In the multi-chamber container as shown in
The present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiment, and is capable of being carried into practice with various modifications thereof. For example, although the above-mentioned embodiment describes the case of two filling chambers, the present invention is applicable to cases of three or more filling chambers. Further, although the above-mentioned embodiment describes the case of filling solutions into filling chambers, the present invention is applicable to cases of filling powdery substances into filling chambers. Further, materials, sizes, shapes and the like in the above-mentioned embodiment are of examples, and the invention is not limited thereto. Moreover, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be carried into practice with various modifications thereof without departing from the scope of the invention.
