Procedures such as diagnosis and therapy conducted using catheters have been spreading in recent years, since they involve less burden on the patient, as compared with elaborate procedures under general anesthesia. Such a minimally invasive procedure is conducted by introducing catheters and other various devices through a puncture hole formed at an arm, a leg or the like of the patient so as to penetrate into an artery. In addition, during the procedure, the conditions inside a blood vessel of the patient are observed through radiographic imaging. Specifically, the patient is laid on an imaging apparatus for displaying an image by receiving X-rays, and is irradiated with X-rays from above.
In such a surgery, a very wide variety of medical devices and medicines are used, e.g. devices used in the preparatory stage before surgery, such as throw-away nonwoven fabric (drape) laid on the imaging apparatus, an instillation set including a set of needle and tubes for dropping heparin as an antithrombic into the patient, and medicines such as disinfectant; medical doctor's procedure clothing, gloves, covers for shoes, masks, absorptive cotton for applying the disinfectant, etc. and devices used in the starting stage of surgery, such as tweezers, forceps, scissors; a skin cutting knife and an indwelling needle; devices used for diagnosis or therapy stage, such as an introducer sheath, a dilator, a guide wire for introducer, a syringe, an angiography catheter, a guide wire for the angiography catheter, angiographic medium, a microcatheter, a PTCA (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) guiding catheter (in the shapes for cardiac right-side coronary artery and for cardiac left-side coronary artery or the like), a guide wire for PTCA, a PTCA balloon catheter, a balloon inflator (indeflator), a stent with delivery catheter; devices used for after surgery stage, such as a hemostatic devices; other devices such as beakers, cups and the like for temporary storage of medicines, etc. Besides, for prevention of infection, most of these devices are disposable.
Conventionally, the above-mentioned devices are preliminarily placed on a table or a wagon with casters by a nurse. However, the nurse who, unlike the medical doctor, does not undergo scrupulous disinfection is permitted to touch those packaging surfaces of the devices which are exposed to the out but is not permitted to directly touch those devices inside the packages which may make contact with the patient's blood. On the other hand, the medical doctor who will engage directly in the surgery is permitted to directly touch the devices but is not permitted to touch the packaging surfaces which are exposed to the out.
Therefore, in the preparatory state, the nurse has been required to carry out very elaborate works, such as taking the devices out of the packages in a remote manner by use of forceps or the like means. In addition, the supplies work for purchasing and preparing the large number of devices has also been very troublesome.
Under the above-mentioned circumstances, there has been a movement to collectively envelope the devices to be used until the preparatory stage of a catheter procedure into a tray to form a kit, thereby simplifying the labor for purchase and layout and preventing misuse and mis-preparation. Meanwhile, in order to envelop a long catheter of more than 70 cm in length in such a tray, there is no other method than making round the catheter. However, since a braid of stainless steel wire is embedded in an angiography catheter or a PTCA guiding catheter, this method results in that the catheter acquires curls in the round shape due to the plastic deformation of the stainless steel wire and the catheter cannot be used in introduction into a blood vessel at the time of procedure. In view of this, the things enveloped into a kit have been limited to small packageable devices, excluding the catheter.
For packaging a long or large-sized medical device, it may be contemplated to enlarge the tray or package itself in size. This approach, however, would leads to the inconveniences in that more room is taken when the devices are stocked in hospitals, that they cannot be completely contained in the refuse bin at the time of discarding them after procedure, and so on. In the method disclosed in Patent Document 1, the catheter as a whole is packaged as it is in a long state, so that the package is large in size, and the devices packaged together with the catheter are limited to thin devices.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 11-130132