Post-operative patients who have had bladder or prostate surgery are often hospitalized several days for Continuous Bladder Irrigation, or CBI. A 3,000 ml bag of sterile water or saline hangs above the patient and drips through a tubing into a three way catheter placed in the bladder, flushing the bladder of urine and clots then exiting via the catheter, down tubing to a 4,000 ml collection bag. This set-up requires frequent manual irrigation to remove small clots which plug the tip of the catheter in the bladder.

My invention solves the two biggest problems with this system:
1) Disconnecting the tubing from the catheter to irrigate it causes potential for asepsis and frequently causes spills of both urine and the irrigant on the patient and/ or bedding or the medical staff doing the procedure. Any time the tubing is disconnected there is the potential for contamination of the inside, which should remain sterile.
By adding an access port (to the tubing, the catheter, or as an extra piece which can be inserted between the tubing and the catheter, as needed) irrigation becomes more antiseptic and simpler for the medical staff to do.

2) The clots can become too large within the collection bag to flow out the small outlet spout, currently located at the bottom of the bag. Much time is utilized breaking up clots in the collection bag by pressing them through the plastic of the bag to make them small enough to go out the spout.
Moving the outlet to the top and enlarging it not only makes it simple to empty even if there are large clots, it eliminates the possibility of leakage from a spout on the bottom.

Hospitals have been using the current system for at least the 43 years I have worked in them as an RN. In gaining a patent pending status, no other system has been found to correct these issues.

My system can be used worldwide, wherever the need for irrigation and intermittent flushing is needed. Thus, the market potential is large. In fact, for simple, common catheter drainage the top-emptying collection bag alone is a vast improvement - due to reduced potential for infection and leaking - over the “bottom spout” one currently in wide use.

In considering manufacturing and production cost, I believe these to be minimal issues as my invention is a variation of current use.

Doctors and medical staff worldwide will want to use this simpler, cleaner, less time consuming equipment over what is currently available.