JPS63286156A - Folded container and method for folding the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To simplify handling, to also reduce a keeping space and to certainly perform sterilizing treatment, by pressing a container so as to superpose both end parts thereof to obtain the flatly folded container and making it possible to introduce a desired fluid into said container. CONSTITUTION:The first and second side wall parts 12, 14 of a medical container 10 held to a flat state are pulled in a direction spaced apart from each other. That is, both of the first and second wall parts 12, 14 are pulled in the direction crossing the flat direction at a right angle to once release the close contact state of both of them. Next, the end part having a tube body 18 mounted thereto, that is, the lower end edge 17 and a upper end edge 15 of the medical container 10 are pressed so as to be superposed each other. As a result, triangular expanded parts 12a, 14a are respectively formed to the first and second side wall parts 12, 14. By this method, the medical container 10 folded in a flat state is obtained. When sterilizing treatment is applied to the medical container 10 using EOG, the pressurized ethylene oxide gas is allowed to penetrate in the expanded parts 12a, 14a of the medical container 10 from the opening part 16 of the tube body 18.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a folded container and a folding method thereof;
More specifically, when folding a flat container formed of a flexible member, for example, a flexible plastic member, a pair of side walls that constitute the container and are in close contact with each other are pulled in a direction away from each other. Later, when the ends of the container are overlapped and pressed, thereby maintaining the flat state, and when a fluid such as sterilization gas is injected into the container, the side walls bulge out without coming into close contact with each other. A folded container and its foldable container that can spread sterilizing gas everywhere, thereby ensuring that the container can be sterilized, and that the container can be easily handled after the sterilization process is completed. Regarding the tatami method.

[Background of the Invention] Conventionally, medical containers have been used to fill predetermined amounts of drugs and medical solutions. In this case, a medical container formed by pultruding a flexible member, such as a relatively flexible plastic member into a cylindrical shape, and closing the ends by heat sealing or the like, is particularly widely used as the medical container. ing. The flexible plastic container is extremely easy to handle and difficult to damage, and when storing the container, it can be folded to minimize the space occupied. It is from.

Incidentally, the inside of the plastic medical container is sterilized during its manufacturing process. At that time, the medical container is placed in a closed tank with both side walls of the container in close contact with each other, or with the container in this state being bent.
Treatments such as EOG sterilization (EOG sterilization) or autoclave sterilization are performed. In fact, as mentioned above, EOG sterilization involves sealing a mixed gas of ethylene oxide gas and water vapor in a sealed tank, heating it for a predetermined period of time, and then exhausting the mixed gas in the tank. This is done by introducing air. On the other hand, autoclave sterilization involves placing a container in a sealed tank and heating, pressurizing, and humidifying the container to perform sterilization using the heat, pressure, and steam.

However, if EOG sterilization is attempted, for example, with both sides of the medical container in close contact with each other as described above, the inside of the medical container may not be reliably sterilized.

That is, even if the sealed tank containing the medical container is filled with a mixed gas of ethylene oxide gas and water vapor, the both side walls of the medical container are in close contact with each other, The mixed gas may not be able to sufficiently penetrate into the container through the opening defined in the container. That is, the mixed gas only penetrates into the interior of the medical container depending on the gas permeability of the material forming the medical container. As a result, there is a concern that the interior of the medical container may not be sufficiently and reliably sterilized.

Furthermore, as described above, if sterilization is performed with both side walls constituting a medical container in close contact with each other, the both side walls will be welded to each other due to the heat generated during the sterilization process. Therefore, in this case, when filling the medical container with a drug or drug solution, it becomes difficult to separate the side walls from each other, making it difficult to fill the drug or drug solution, etc. This presents an inconvenience in that it is difficult to remove/handle the container.

[Object of the Invention] The present invention has been made in order to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages, and the present invention has been made in order to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages. Once pulled in the direction of separation from each other, both ends of the container are pressed so as to overlap, thereby obtaining a flat folded container and ensuring that the desired fluid is sufficiently and reliably filled inside during processing such as sterilization. To provide a folded container and a method for folding the container, which can be easily introduced, requires less storage space, and can be reliably sterilized.

[Means for Achieving the Object] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a folded container made of a relatively flexible material, the container having a pair of flat side walls constituting the container. It is characterized in that it is pressed and folded in a direction perpendicular to the direction of separation while being spaced apart so as not to come into close contact with each other.

Furthermore, the present invention provides a method for folding a container made of a relatively flexible material, which comprises pulling a pair of flat side walls of the container in close contact with each other in a direction to separate them from each other. It is characterized by comprising a first step of releasing the close contact state of the side wall portions of the set, and a second step of pressing and folding the separated side wall portions in a direction perpendicular to the direction of separation.

[Embodiments] Next, preferred embodiments of the container according to the present invention in relation to its folding method will be listed and explained in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 to 3, reference numeral 10 indicates a medical container as a container according to the present invention, and this medical container 10
is formed from a flexible plastic member. The medical container 10 consists of a first side wall part 12 and a second side wall part 14, which are liquid-tightly joined by heat sealing or the like over substantially the entire circumference at the outer edge thereof. In this case, the heat-sealed upper edge 15 and lower edge 17 are
Suspension and fixing holes 15a, 17a, and 17b are bored, and the central part of one end side of the medical container 10 communicates with the inside of the medical container 10 to introduce a drug solution thereto. A tube 18 is attached defining an opening 16 for the purpose.

The material forming the medical container 10 is not particularly limited as long as it is a flexible member with high flexibility, but examples include soft vinyl chloride, vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer, polypropylene, silicone rubber, etc. Medium, one material is selected.

The medical container according to the present invention is basically constructed as described above, and next, a method for folding the container will be specifically explained.

First, the first side wall part 12 and the second side wall part 14 of the medical container 10, which maintain a flat state in the state shown in FIG. 1, are pulled in a direction to separate them from each other (see FIG. 2). That is, it is pulled in a direction perpendicular to the flattening direction, and as a result, the close contact between the first side wall portion 12 and the second side wall portion 14 is temporarily released.

Next, the end portion of the medical container 10 to which the tube body 18 is attached, that is, the lower end edge 17 and the upper end edge 15 are pressed so as to overlap. As a result, the first side wall portion 12, the second side wall portion 14
Triangular bulges 12a and 14a are defined in each of the bulges 12a and 14a (see FIG. 3). As a result, the medical container 10 folded into a flat state is obtained.

In this case, according to the folding method according to the present invention, the medical container 10 is folded in a state where the first side wall portion 12 and the second side wall portion 14 that constitute the medical container 10 are not in close contact with each other. Therefore, for example, when applying EOG sterilization to the medical container 10, pressurized ethylene oxide gas is released from the opening 16 of the tube body 18 into the bulged portions 12a, 1 of the medical container 10.
Therefore, the ethylene oxide gas is sufficiently distributed inside the container 4a, and the sterilization process of the medical container 10 is reliably performed. Furthermore, it is possible to avoid a situation in which the first side wall portion 12 and the second side wall portion 14 are welded together due to heat during the sterilization process. Further, even when the ethylene oxide gas is discharged after the EOG sterilization process is completed, the ethylene oxide gas is discharged from the opening 16, so that the discharge operation can be performed reliably. This was confirmed by the experiments described below.

That is, medical container 1 using the folding method according to the present invention
0 and other unfolded medical containers for comparison, insert filter paper coated with bacteria into these containers, and then place the medical container 1 in a sealed tank.
0 and other medical containers were stored separately and EOG sterilized.

In addition, when performing the EOG sterilization process, a mixed gas of ethylene oxide gas and carbon dioxide gas mixed at a ratio of 1:4 was selected as the gas injected into the tank. The inside of each tank housing the medical container 10 and other medical containers was heated, maintained at 60° C., humidified, filled with the mixed gas, and maintained in that state for about 60 minutes. That is, the medical container 10 and other medical containers were allowed to react with the mixed gas for 60 minutes. At that time, the pressure inside the tank is always 1
．． 2 kg/cm'' was maintained.Next, after removing the gas from the tank, the atmosphere was introduced to complete the sterilization process.

Next, after completing the EOG sterilization process, the medical container I
The filter paper loaded in O and other medical containers was placed in a medium previously stored in a clean test tube, and cultured for 7 days at a temperature of approximately 37°C. In addition, each of the plurality of clean test tubes contains 6#ll! It has been previously confirmed that the culture medium is stored in the clean test tube, and that the clean test tube is sterilized by autoclave sterilization and left for 2 days to be sterile.

As a result of conducting the above experiments three times, it was found that all medical containers 10 using the folding method according to the present invention were reliably sterilized, while other medical containers 10 that were not folded Regarding medical containers, it was found that each medical container was not sterilized. Furthermore, in the actual sterilization process, the reaction time of the medical container 10 with the gas is about 6 times longer than the reaction time of the gas in this experiment.
Considering the fact that the number of times is doubled, the medical container 10 can be sterilized extremely reliably.

Next, after the mixed gas used for the EOG sterilization is discharged, the mixed gas remaining in the medical container 10 and other medical containers, the gas mixture remaining in the medical container 10 and other medical containers, and the material forming the medical container 10 and other medical containers. An experiment was conducted to measure the amount of mixed gas remaining in the

In this experiment, after sterilizing the medical container 10 and other medical containers under the same conditions as the EOG sterilization in the experiment described above, the mixed gas in the tank was discharged and sterilized at 50°.
The sample was stored for 40 hours at a temperature of 0.5 C and then left at room temperature for 3 days.

Then, 1 mA of the air in the medical container 10 and other medical containers was sampled, and the amount of ethylene oxide gas present in the air at 1 mfV was measured.

On the other hand, the medical container 10 and other medical containers placed in the tank are taken out, the material constituting it is cut into a predetermined size, the weight is measured, and the material is placed in a sterilized bottle. I added the material.

Next, an ethanol solution containing propylene oxide was injected into the sterilized bottle, which was left in an oven at 60°C for 1 hour and then cooled to eliminate the ethylene present in the resulting extract. The amount of oxide gas was measured. Table 1 shows the results of each of the above measurements.

As can be easily understood from Table 1, the amount of ethylene oxide gas remaining in the material constituting the medical container 10 is greater than the amount of ethylene oxide gas remaining in the materials constituting other medical containers. The results showed that there were fewer Therefore, it has been found that when the container folding method according to the present invention is adopted, the mixed gas used in the EOGM bacteria treatment can be easily discharged.

As a result of the following two experiments, when the container folding method according to the present invention is carried out, the medical container 10 can be reliably sterilized, and the mixed gas etc. used for sterilization can be discharged easily. It has become clear that this is easy.

According to the present invention, when folding a medical container made of a flexible member, a pair of side wall portions of the medical container are pulled in a direction to separate them from each other. After the pair of side walls are released from the close contact state, both ends of the medical container are overlapped. Therefore, when sterilizing a medical container using this folding method, the sterilization mixture gas etc. can easily spread throughout the inside of the medical container from the opening, thus ensuring the sterilization process. This provides the advantage of being able to perform Furthermore, since the mixed gas for sterilization reaches the inside of the medical container through the opening of the medical container, if the material forming the medical container is a flexible member, the material with poor gas permeability may be used. It may also be possible to obtain the effect that the selection range of materials can be expanded. Furthermore, it is easy to discharge the mixed gas that performs the sterilizing action, and as mentioned above, since the pair of side walls constituting the medical container are not in close contact with each other, the container is exposed to heat during the sterilization process. It is also possible to easily handle the container, such as by easily filling the medical container with medicines, medicinal solutions, etc., without the side walls constituting the container being welded to each other.

Although the present invention has been described above with reference to preferred embodiments, the present invention is not limited to these embodiments.
For example, the shape of the container may be elliptical or circular, and it is not limited to medical containers (it can also be used for food containers, etc.). Of course, various improvements and changes in design are possible without departing from the above.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 and 2 are explanatory diagrams of the folding method according to the present invention, and FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of a folded container according to the present invention.

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A folded container made of a relatively flexible material, in which a pair of flat side walls constituting the container are spaced apart from each other so as not to come into close contact with each other, and are A folded container characterized by being folded by pressing. (2) A method for folding a container made of a relatively flexible material, which involves pulling a pair of flat side walls of the container in close contact with each other in a direction to separate them from each other. A method for folding a container, comprising a first step of releasing the close contact state of the side wall portions, and a second step of folding the separated side wall portions by pressing in a direction perpendicular to the direction of separation.