Patent Application
20170065494
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an oral medication delivery system including a pacifier having a nipple and a solid oral medication (e.g. a tablet) that is carried by the nipple and adapted to dissolve in the mouth of a baby or a young child. The nipple has a plurality of perforations through which the medication is dispensed over time when the nipple is placed in the mouth of the baby or young child who then sucks on the nipple.
2. Background Art
A significant problem faced by a youngster who is sick is the inability to sleep for long periods of time. For example, a youngster with a cold may experience cold symptoms and constant coughing throughout the night. The noise and anxiety generated by such coughing is likely to prevent the child's parents from getting a good night sleep as well. While it would be desirable to be able to deliver a medicine to the child to relieve it's coughing and heal its illness, this solution becomes difficult if the medication must be delivered throughout the night. In this case, the parents will be required to frequently wake and leave their bed whenever it becomes necessary to give their child a dose of medication.
Nevertheless, the size of some oral medications is too large to be swallowed easily by a youngster without inducing choking. To avoid a choking reflex, it is known to dip the nipple of the child's pacifier into a liquid medication. However, this solution is only temporary and still requires that the liquid medication be repeatedly applied to the nipple throughout the night.
Accordingly, what would be desirable is an easily refillable oral medication delivery system that is particularly suitable for use by babies and young children so that a dose of medication can be dispensed continuously throughout the day and/or night without subjecting the child to the risk of choking.
In general terms, disclosed herein is an oral medication delivery system that is ideal to be placed in the mouth of a baby or young child so that a dose of medication can be dispensed day or night on a continuous basis. In a preferred embodiment, the oral medication delivery system is a pacifier and the oral medication to be dispensed therefrom is a solid (e.g., a tablet) that is adapted to dissolve over time in the mouth of the user. The pacifier has opposing proximal and distal ends that can be disconnected from one another when the oral medication has dissolved in the user's mouth and must be replaced by a new dose.
The proximal end of the pacifier includes a soft, flexible nipple into which the solid oral medication is loaded. The nipple has a plurality of perforations through which the oral medication is sucked after the nipple is placed in the user's mouth and the oral medication dissolves. An outer locking collar surrounds an open end of the nipple through which the oral medication is loaded.
The opposite distal end of the pacifier includes a pull ring that is pivotally connected to an inner locking collar by means of a coupler located therebetween. Once the oral medication has been loaded into the nipple via the open end thereof, the inner locking collar is moved into receipt by the outer locking collar, whereby the proximal and distal ends of the pacifier are detachably connected together. More particularly, a pair of retractable locking tabs are pushed by opposite ends of a coil spring outwardly from respective openings formed in the inner locking collar at the distal end of the pacifier for receipt through axially aligned locking slots formed in the outer locking collar at the proximal end. By virtue of the foregoing, the outer locking collar is locked in surrounding engagement with the inner locking collar to close the open end of the nipple and thereby ready the nipple of the pacifier to be placed in the mouth of the user to receive the medication by way of the perforations formed in the nipple.
An oral medication delivery system which includes the combination of a pacifier 1 and an oral medication 3 in accordance with a first preferred embodiment of this invention is disclosed while referring concurrently to
It is contemplated that the oral medication 3 to be dispensed to the infant or young child has a solid form. In this case, the solid medication 3 has the shape of a tablet. To achieve the advantages of this invention without subjecting the user to choking, the solid medication 3 must be adapted to dissolve in the user's mouth so that it will be delivered to the user over time until the tablet has fully dissolved.
The oral medication 3 is initially loaded into and carried by the pacifier 1 so as to dissolve when the pacifier is placed in the mouth of the user. As an advantage of this invention, once the initial dose of oral medication 3 has partially or fully dissolved, it can be replaced with a new dose of medication to be delivered from the pacifier 1 to the user at a later time.
The pacifier 1 of the oral medication delivery system of this invention has some features which are common to a conventional pacifier on which an infant or young child will suck. That is, the pacifier 1 includes a hollow nipple 5 at a proximal end 20 thereof to be located in the mouth of the user. The nipple 5 is manufactured from a soft, flexible material and shaped to fit comfortably in the mouth of the user. However, unlike a conventional pacifier, and as an important feature of this invention, a plurality of small perforations 7 (e.g. holes or slits) are formed in a closed end of the nipple 5 by which to enable the user's mouth to communicate with and exert a suction force on the interior of the nipple at which the oral medication is carried.
The nipple 5 at the proximal end 20 of the pacifier 1 has an open end 9 which lies opposite the closed end thereof in which the perforations 7 are formed. An oval-shaped outer locking collar 10 surrounds and extends from the open end 9 of the nipple 5. The outer locking collar 10 has a pair of locking slots 12 formed therethrough. A thin and slightly curved mouth guard 14 surrounds the proximal end 20 of the pacifier 1 so as to lie between the nipple 5 and the outer locking collar 10 in order to position the pacifier against the user's lips when the nipple is placed in the user's mouth (best shown in
The distal end 30 of the pacifier 1 which lies opposite the proximal end 20 includes the usual pull ring 18 to which a pulling force is applied to remove the nipple 5 from the mouth of the user. The pull ring 18 is pivotably connected to a coupler 22 that is affixed to the outside of an oval-shaped inner locking collar 24. As will now be explained, the inner locking collar 24 at the distal end 30 of the pacifier 1 is adapted to first be connected to and then disconnected from the outer locking collar 10 at the proximal end of pacifier 1 so that the oral medication 3 can be placed inside the hollow nipple 5 via the open end 9 of the nipple (best shown in
Referring in this regard to
When the proximal and distal ends 20 and 30 of the pacifier 1 are separated, the oral medication 3 is loaded into the nipple 5 via the open end 9 of the nipple. The proximal and distal ends 20 and 30 are now connected together to hold the oral medication 3 in place and permit the medication to be dissolved and dispensed to the user by way of the perforations 7 when the nipple 5 is inserted into the user's mouth.
More particularly, the smaller oval-shaped inner locking collar 24 at the distal end 30 of the pacifier 1 is moved inwardly of the larger oval-shaped outer locking collar 10 at the proximal end 20. At the same time, the retractable locking tabs 28 will be momentarily pushed inwardly through the openings 29 formed in the inner locking collar 24, and the coil spring 26 will be compressed. Once the outer and inner locking collars 10 and 24 are moved one within the other, the coil spring 26 will expand and the retractable locking tabs 28 will be correspondingly pushed outwardly through the axially aligned openings 29 formed in the inner locking collar 24 and the locking slots 12 formed in the outer locking collar 10. Accordingly, and as is best shown in
At this point, the pacifier 1 is ready to be used by the infant or young child to continuously dispense the oral medication 3 when the nipple 5 is placed in the user's mouth and the user sucks on the nipple as in the case of a conventional pacifier. When the medication has fully or partially dissolved in the user's mouth, pushing forces being simultaneously applied in opposite directions to the retractable locking tabs 28 will enable the formerly connected outer and inner locking collars 10 and 24 to be disconnected from one another so that a new dose of medication can be loaded into the nipple 5 to enable the pacifier 1 to be reused.
The pacifier 1 that is shown in
The outer cylindrical locking collar 36 at the proximal end 40 of the pacifier 32 has a set of threads 42 running around the interior thereof. The cylindrical inner locking collar 38 at the distal end 44 of pacifier 32 has a complementary set of threads 46 running around the exterior thereof. The diameter of the outer locking collar 36 is larger than the diameter of the inner locking collar 38. Once the oral medication 34 is loaded into the nipple 5 through the open end 9, the proximal and distal ends 40 and 44 will be connected together when the cylindrical inner locking collar 38 is rotated so as to lie inside and be surrounded by the cylindrical outer locking collar 36. That is, the exterior threads 46 of the inner locking collar 38 are rotated into mating engagement with the interior threads 42 of the outer locking collar 36 at which time the pacifier 32 is ready to be used by placing the nipple 5 in the mouth of the user so that medication can be dissolved and continuously delivered from the nipple to the user by way of the nipple perforations 7.
The pacifiers of the oral medication delivery systems herein disclosed have been described as having particular application for delivering an oral medication to a baby or a young child. However, it is to be understood that the pacifiers can also be used by older children and adults who have difficulty swallowing large pills and tablets. In this case, the size of the nipple and the shape of the mouth guard may change depending upon the user and the type of medication to be delivered.
