Peritoneal dialysis is quite well-known and, for a long time, has been found to be a proven alternative to hemodialysis for cleansing the blood of patients who have failing kidneys, or whose kidneys do not function at all.
Examples of various systems and devices which are intended for use in peritoneal dialysis can be found, for example, in European Patent No. 335,814; International Application No. WO 84/02277; British Patent No. 2,009,619; and U.S. Pat. Nos. Re. 32,203 and 4,252,115. In these systems, peritoneal catheters of the type which are described, for example, in International Application No. 86/06282 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,004 are utilized.
The various systems can then be connected to the peritoneal catheter by means of connectors, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,204.
Patient tubes of various lengths thus form a part of all of these systems, which tubes attach the patient's peritoneal catheter to the rest of the system. For the patient's comfort, these patient tubes are often provided with a length of from two to three meters. In this manner, each change of dialysis solution results in the return of a considerable amount of already used or spent dialysis solution.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds