Container for urine |
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申请号 | US10685598 | 申请日 | 2003-10-16 | 公开(公告)号 | US20050081793A1 | 公开(公告)日 | 2005-04-21 |
申请人 | Martti Sannikka; | 发明人 | Martti Sannikka; | ||||
摘要 | Disclosed is a disposable plastic container, used to collect and test veterinary and medical urine samples from cats, dogs and people. A commercial urine test strip is attached on the outside of the container inside a protective envelope. Once opened, the strip is dipped into the urine and a chemical reaction changes the color of the pads. This color is then compared to a reference color on the label which may also be attached to the container. For cats the containers may be loaded with litter and placed inside a multi compartment partitioned litter box. | ||||||
权利要求 | |||||||
说明书全文 | The invention pertains to containers, particularly disposable plastic containers for the veterinary and medical collection and testing of urine using commercially available medical urine test strips. The content of the Applicant's prior application 10/443055, Partitioned Cat Litter Box, is incorporated herein by reference. Urine is collected for several reasons including legal, medical, bacteriological and biochemical testing. The most cost-effective devices used to perform the non-invasive macroscopic portion of urinalysis are commercially prepared medical test strips. These narrow plastic test strips hold test pads that have chemicals in them. When dipped briefly into urine, these pads absorb the urine and a chemical reaction changes the color of the pads. It allows qualitative and semi quantitative determination at least ten different parameters by comparison between the reaction colors on the test strip and the reference colors on the label. The same strips can be used for people and their pets i.e. cats and dogs. It is ironic, that despite the test strips being aimed for professional use, people at home can use the same strips easily as the urologists at registered laboratories, for a simple and fast indication of illness or infection in urinary tract, bladder, kidneys, liver etc. The most frequently performed chemical tests using reagent test strips include: Specific gravity, pH, protein, glucose, ketones, blood, leukocyte esterase, nitrite, bilirubin and urobilinogen. However, there are more than 100 different tests that can be performed on urine. Urine sample is normally obtained by one of the following three methods: catheterization by inserting a flexible plastic tube through the urethra into the bladder, cystocentesis by introducing a needle directly into the bladder through the body wall or clean-catch midstream sampling ie. urinating into a clean container. The clean-catch method is by far the most popular but it is the least sterile and is associated with the most lab errors and repeat tests. This invention pertains in part, to the clean-catch method. The corresponding prior art is replete with examples of devices for cats using various litter boxes and litters, dogs using, metal ladles, small plastic bottles and specially adapted urine collectors for women including systems requiring body contact. Several systems intended for women are in practice too messy, unhygienic and inconvenient to use, as it is difficult to place and hold any testing container in the midstream without splashing, contaminating hands, garments and the whole area causing embarrassment and distress. The invention can be used by the whole family including males, females and two of the most popular pets i.e. cats and dogs. The urine sample can be collected and tested in the original disposable inexpensive plastic container eliminating the need to handle and transfer the urine. Thus it would be advantageous to have a self-contained system allowing low cost health checks to be performed particularly at home when any of the members appears to be sick without obvious cause. The proposed invention addresses at least some of the above concerns. It is a general object of the invention to provide an inexpensive disposable polymeric container suitable for collection of urine sample from four distinctly separate groups namely cats, dogs, men and women and testing the urine most often at home using an individually sealed commercially available test strip attached to each container. When used for cats the object of the invention is to provide a container, which facilitates the proper utilization of urine test strips or color changing reagent powders adapted to be used with various litters suitable for collection and testing of veterinary urine samples with the aid of a multi compartment cat litter box of the type disclosed in the applicant's co pending U.S. application, Ser. No. 10/443,055 titled ‘Partitioned Cat Litter Box’. When used for dogs an object of the invention is to provide a container, which facilitates collection of veterinary urine samples with or without an optional improvised extension handle where a second identical container is used as a cradle where the test container could be nested during the collection, most often during the morning walk. With regard to women an object of the invention is to provide a container, which is dimensioned to be housed in the bottom of the ordinary toilet bowl above the water level so that a woman while comfortably seated can collect a midstream urine sample simply by leaning forward during the mid part of the uninterrupted voiding process without the need to hold the container. Men can hold the container manually. The container could be described as an inexpensive, disposable, convenient container similar to the ones used for dairy or deli foods at a retail store. As it has no microwave, freezer or dishwasher use, it can be made thin walled using APET (amorphous polyethylene terephthalate) or PP (polypropylene). As the lids do not require the see-through clarity they could be made of HDPE (high density polyethylene), which is readily recyclable. An injection molding or thermoforming process could manufacture both parts. The container's general shape is: rectangular for storage space utilization, tapering to simplify molding, stackable to save volume, lidded to stop spillage, thin walled to minimize material costs, raised mounded to stiffen the bottom and reduce splashing and when used for cats with small amounts of litter for waste disposal to allow quick draining of urine into the bottom grooves where the litter can absorb it more efficiently, disposable to eliminate cleaning, wide mouthed to catch urine efficiently, large enough to accommodate a hand holding a test strip without touching container walls, dimensioned to rest in the toilet bowl without its bottom touching the water and without its mouth touching the bowl walls so that unwanted urine flow along the bowl walls bypasses the container. The container's approximate dimensions could be: height 50 mm, width 120 mm, length 175 mm, volume 650 ml, wall thickness 0.2 mm and the height of the two centrally located bottom mounds 10-15 mm. The container may be provided empty or charged with a portion of cat litter of any kind, with or without lid. The clean-catch midstream sample should be captured with a sterile disposable container and the testing should be performed while the sample is fresh. A reasonable upper time limit for testing is 2 hours from voiding (4 hours with refrigerated samples). The sample should be thoroughly shaken in the container prior to testing. The test strip should be only briefly (about 1 second) dipped into the urine making sure that all the test pads are moistened. After a specified time (typically 1 minute) the reaction colors on the test strip should be compared with the reference colors on the label attached on the outside wall of the container while holding the strip in a horizontal position. The results should be noted for later use during consultation with the professionals. Any color changes appearing only along the edges of the test pads, or developing after more than two minutes, do not have any diagnostic significance. The sample can be transported to a medical facility for professional examination while in the original container or for more complicated traveling arrangements, the urine sample could be poured into a special screw-capped container that can be packed in a transport box with ice packs. Diagnosis or therapy should never be based on one test result alone but should be established in the context of all other medical findings. This invention should be used under the directions of veterinarians or doctors when their clients are worried that their pets, or the people themselves are sick without apparent cause. The home test may give false positive results for various reasons, but it may also reveal unnoticed diseases and give preliminary guidance before the consultation, professional sampling and prognosis. The amount of litter needed in these containers for good medical samples vary from a few spoonfuls to a small cupful depending on cats' preferences. Inert litter materials like plastic beads, paraffin coated sand, rubber granules, aquarium gravel or non-absorbable long lasting litters etc are preferred if all the possible parameters are being tested. However, one may have a cat, which requires only pH, glucose or any other single parameter monitoring. A cat may like one of the following litters: clay, wheat, corncob, citrus, cedar wood, straw, peanut shell, orange peel, sand, potting mixture, coconut husk, pine, walnut shell or second hand paper pellet based litters etc. The cat's chosen litter can be saturated with water and pre-tested to find out if the litter itself affects the nominated test pad. If not, a sufficient amount of litter acceptable by the cat can be placed in each container making sure that when the container is visited there is enough unabsorbed urine left for the dipping of the test strip. In this instance the other possible false positive readings on the irrelevant pads can be ignored. Getting a meaningful veterinary urine sample from a cat can be difficult. Taking the cat to a veterinarian for catheterization or cystocentesis is not always the right solution either, as the very trip to the vet can course stress that may substantially alter the urine values like pH due to hyperventilation etc. Relaxed home atmosphere samples are preferred. As it is difficult to get a midstream urine sample from a cat, a total sample is generally accepted. Sometimes the dietary monitoring is performed for several days at a time. During the medical applications all the compartments of the litter box are loaded with clean containers including litter and sealed test strips. When the medical survey is finished the unused containers can be removed for later use with cats and the litter box converted to normal daily waste disposal mode, reusing containers. Alternatively the medically loaded containers can be emptied from litter and used for dogs or people as required. With this container, the daily amount of cat urine (or change in it) can be easily determined by subtracting the weight of the representative container prior to soiling from the weight of the soiled container. The method works well even when the litter has absorbed the urine completely and there is no liquid present. This transparent disposable container can also be used with powder type color changing reagent pieces sensitive to urine pH or glucose etc as an alternative method for the test strips technique with cats. Relatively small amounts of those powders can be placed anywhere along the bottom grooves 11 of the container prior to loading it with a cupful of various litters including some clumping litters. The color changes can be observed through the transparent bottom of the container. The advantage of those color-changing pieces is that they can hold meaningful color information for long periods even days, whereas the moistened test strip looses its accurate colors sometimes after only 2 minutes. Another advantage is that these small disposable containers do not require cleaning and there is no need to mix a teaspoonful of powder into a cupful of litter. Conventional litter boxes have to be sanitized and dried before a packet-full of indicator pieces or powder can be completely blended into a heavy bucketful of litter using utensils, which in turn have to be stored and kept clean. Also these disposable transparent containers are convenient for accommodating special blood indicating litters required to be used in small quantities as an alternative indication method for the presence of blood in cat urine. It will be appreciated that the invention has been disclosed with reference to particular details of construction and this should be interpreted as examples and not as limitations to the scope or spirit of the invention. |