Maintaining medicine quality in medicine preparation
AssigneeThorne Intellectual Property Holdings, LLC
InventorsGale Harrison Thorne, JR., Gale Harrison Thorne, Kendall Patterick Thorne
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Convenience kits with appropriate safeguards for preparing medicine, especially medicine which cannot be further sterilized, for use in providing medicine preparations in such patient treatment containers as TPN modules, an elastomeric balls, IV bags and syringes is disclosed. A combined sterilizer/Header Bag sealer and a special tool for accessing medicine source containers and decapping and capping syringes are also disclosed.
Claims10
A convenience kit for preparing medicine, used in patient treatment, that cannot be further sterilized, said convenience kit comprising inherent safeguards for assuring medicinal quality of said medical preparation is:
- not adversely affected by medicine preparation, said convenience kit comprising:
- a Header Bag in which said medicine is prepared, said Header Bag, as a safeguard, being closed and sealed about vessels requisite for preparing said medicine for patient treatment which are closed, sealed and pre-sterilized and disposed therein along with at least one source vessel containing said medicine also provided closed and sealed as a further safeguard;
- and
- all exposed surfaces inside said Header Bag being sterilized by a sterilizing gas such that medicine inside the source vessel is neither in contact with nor affected by said sterilizing gas and thereby protected by a resulting safeguard against cross contamination due to contact only between sterilized exposed surfaces.
A method for sterilizing surfaces of medicine containing vessels and other components disposed into a Header Bag comprising the following steps:
- providing all of said medicine containing containers disposed within said Header Bag closed and sealed to assure quality and sterility of medicine disposed therein is maintained and displacing at least one sterilization measuring strip into said Header Bag for visual verification of desired SAL;
- disposing said so-filled Header Bag onto a support structure associated with a Header Bag sealer;
- providing for a sterilizing grade gas to be communicated into said Header Bag through an unclosed portion of said Header Bag;
- providing a vibration mechanism which communicates with said supporting structure for providing cyclic pulsation to each said Header Bag and contents therein for momentary displacement of contacting surfaces to assure function of a safeguard for completely sterilizing all surfaces within said Header Bag;
- displacing said sterilizing grade fluid into each at least one said Header Bag;
- actuating said vibration mechanism;
- and
- continuing sterilizing until all surfaces are sterilized thereby providing an effective safeguard against contact contamination.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.