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Catheter

Catheters have been in use for medical procedures for many years. Catheters can be used for medical procedures to examine, diagnose, and treat while positioned at a specific location within the body that is otherwise inaccessible without more invasive procedures. Catheters are used to move fluids between an internal body site and a point outside the body. Catheters can be used to deliver fluids, including medications, or they can be used to evacuate fluids from a wound created by surgery, trauma, or disease. Typically, catheters are connected to a reservoir for either supplying or collecting the fluid moving between the internal body site and the extracorporeal site. Many people require the use of a catheter for various medical reasons. Catheters may be needed to facilitate urine flow because of medical conditions, including but not limited to neurological disorders, multiple system atrophy, spina bifida, and cerebro-vascular disease. Catheters have provided a way for people affected by these medical conditions to induce urine flow from their bladder. Catheters are well known. Due to the importance of expelling urine from the bladder at multiple times each day, a catheter is a daily essential to users that require catheters for urination. Catheters for draining the bladder are increasingly used for intermittent as well as indwelling or permanent catheterisation. Typically catheters are used by patients suffering from urinary incontinence or by disabled individuals like para- or tetraplegics who may have no control permitting voluntary urination and for whom catheterisation may be the way of urinating e.g. permitting the individual to stay seated in a wheel chair or lying in bed. There are numerous constructions and designs, each of which is particularly adapted to be inserted into a particularly designated body cavity. For example, a urethral catheter is designed to drain accumulated urine secretions from the bladder. A ventricular catheter is adapted to drain excess cerebrospinal fluid from the brain. A peritoneal catheter is used to drain fluid from the peritoneum; as in kidney dialysis. An enema catheter is used to introduce fluid into the gastrointestinal tract. Catheters typically include indicia printed on the extension tubes that provides vital information such as the size, priming volume, and recommended as well as contra-indicated cleaning solutions to use around the catheter entrance to the patient.

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