Note : Les descriptions sont présentées dans la langue officielle dans laquelle elles ont été soumises.
This invention is about splints, for immobilising
broken legs.
In the European patent application 79300396
published under the publication No. 0004204 there is
disclosed a splint made from a rigid extruded plastic
material, of the kind which is available under the
trade mark COROPLAST. This extrusion is eminently
suitable for splints, as described in that publication.
Similar extrusions are available also under the trade
marks C~TONPLAST, DANPLA-ACE, PLASTCORE, WALLENPLAST,
and PRIMEX, CORREX, N~LEX, and ~CI hoards.
One of the features of the splint disclosed is
that the splint may be stored flat, and bent to the
appropriate shape when needed, along pre-creased fold
lines formed in the material. However, although it is
much easier to store a Coroplast (trade mark) splint in
the flat state th~n the forms of splint hitherto known,
the area occupied by the flat splint is quite large, and
some storage difficulty can still be experienced.
This invention is aimed at the problem of
overcoming the storage difficulty of a splint which can
be laid flat pr:ior to use, whilst making sure to keep
the strength, rigidity, and re~iability aspects which
are so necessary in a splint; and without incurring a
manufacturing cost penalty; and without incurring any
difficulties in making the splint ready for use.
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It is an objec-t of -the invention to provide
a splint which can be folded flat for storage in a small
space, yet which does not need expensive locking or
bracing means to prevent it from collapsing accidently
during use.
It has not been possible to provide a pre-packaged
ki-t of the vital medical items needed for the first aid
treatment of broken limbs. The main reason is that the
splint has been too large to be stored in a compact~
manageable container. The need for the provision of
reliable, foolproof, and certain,protection against
accidental collapse, apart from making the splint too
complicated to be always assembled correctly in an
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emergency, has made previous foldable splints far too
expensive to be thrown away after use. The benefits
of having a pre-packed, i.e~ a factory~packed, kit depend
therefore on the provision of a cheap collapsible splint.
The particular injury which is the most difficult
to provide such a kit for is a fractured femur, mainly
because of the need for traction equipment, and because
the splint has to be the full length of the leg. The
kit must include the -traction producing means and harness;
a splint that is as long as the full length of the leg;
groin pads; tie-tapes; and padding. If these items are
not pre-packaged, very careful stock control in the
ambulance, or other first aid centre, is needed to ensure
that they are all available when required.
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It is thus another obiect of -the invention
to provide a splint that can be packed small enollgh to
allow it to form part of a convenient-to~handle, pre-packed
kit of the items needed to immobilize and apply traction
to a fractured femur.
The use of a pre-packed kit means that the items
are all present when needed; and are all clean (they can
even be pre-sterlized and hermetically sealed, if desired~
when needed. To achieve these benefits, each item in
the kit must be inexpensive enough for re-use of the items
to be uneconomical, for re-use would impose the need
fox stock control.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention will
now be described, with reference to the accompanying
drawings, in which:
Fig. 1 is a plan of a splint, laid flat;
Fig. 2 is a section of the material used to make
the splint of Fi~. l;
Fig. 3 is a pictorial view of part of the splint
of Fig. 1, in use.
The splint 10 shown to scale in Fig. 1 is cut
(in a knife-press) from a sheet of the extruded plastic
material marketed under the trade mark COROPLAST. The
material has the double-faced hollow section shown o
scale in Fig. 2. The section includes indlvidual rectan-
gular cells, formed as tubes between ribs 12 of the
section that run longitudinally; that is, in the di_ection
of the arrow 14 in Fig. 1. The extruded section thus has
the form of upper and lower sheets joined together by
ribs. The plastic material is solid, i.e. not foamed,
and is a continuously extruded blend of copolymer resins,
being polypropylene and polyethylene. The solid plastic
has a density of about 0.9 g/cc, and the density of the
whole extrusion is about 800 g/sq.m of area of the
sheets, the overall thickness of the extrusion being 4mm.
The construction of the splint will now be
described with reference to the manner o its use on a
10_ person suffering from a broken femur.
The splint 10 is first passed underneath the broken
leg. ~The splint is thin enough yet rigid enough for this
operation to be achieved with a minimum of additional distress
to the patient. Once the splint has been passed beneath
15 the leg, the task of immobilizing the leg and applying traction
can be accomplished without anything further being passed under
the leg.) Padding (not shown) ls placed alongside the leg, and
the sides 16, 18 are then bent upwards to form, with thè base 20,
a channel for the padded leg.
Tie tapes 22 are provided for holding the tops
of the sides 16, 18 together. The tie-tapes 22 are of
the kind sold under the trade mark Velcro and have the
tiny fastening hooks found in the material: correspond-
ing loops are fixed to further straps (underneath theside 18 in Fig. 1~ which are secured by buttons 24.
The traction to be appl.ed to the leg is
applied by means of the abutment portion 26~ This
comprises two side flaps 28, 30; an end flap 32j and
an end 34. The sides 16, 18 having been bent up, the
side flaps 28, 30 are laid one upon the other, and
upon the end flap 32; the end 34 is doubled over the
three flaps, and a tab 36 is engaged with a comple~
mentary slot 38 to lock the flaps into a rigid box-
like end wall 40.
A foot harness 42 is looped over the foot,
in the manner shown in Fig. 3, the traction strap 44
of the foot harness 42 being passed through the slot
46 in the end wall 40. Th2 slot 46 is a composite
slot, present as a consequence of the provision of
the four corresponding slots 48 in the :Elaps.
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To apply traction, the patient's ankle is held in
one hand and the leg pulled gently (with a force of about
50N~. The traction strap 4~ is drawn taut, then secured to
the end wall 40 by means again of the fastening material
sold unde~ the trade mark Velcro.
The traction force is reacted, in compression
through the material of the splint 10, at the groin
area of the patient. The thinness and rigidity of the
material are of value in making sure that the extremity 50
o$ the side 16 fits comfortably in this area, extreme dis-
comfort being possibly caused if the splint is assembled
clumsily into the groin area. It is preferable to apply
padding (not shown) to the extremity 50. The padding may be
specially pre shaped and secured with an adhesive backing:
it is important that two such pads are provided because it
is easy, in the stress of the moment, to stick a pad to the
wrong one of the sides 16, 18.
Two lines of perforations 52, 54 are provided, by
which excess material may be torn off to shorten the splint
if necessary. Further lines 56 are provided towards the
edges of the sides 16, 18, not for tearing-off purposes, but
to facilitate the bending of these edges over a leg, so that
the ormed channel may conform as much as possible to the
shape of the (padded) leg. Creases, rather than perforations,
~re provided along the fold lines 56 as indicated, -though per-
forations could be used here instead of the creases if the
folds were found to be too stiff for easy bending.
The holes 60 are provided for the purpose of
allowing water to drain out of the splint (for the splinted
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leg may have to be immersed in water, if the patient is
on a lift-raft at sea for example: the material itsel~
is ~uite unaffected even by prolonged contact with wa-
ter) or to indicate that the leg is bleeding. The re-
cesses 62 are provided to allow easy hand access to thepatient's ankle. The foot harness 42 is secured over
the instep again with the fastening material sold under
the trade mark Velcro.
A part of the splint that needs particularly
careful design is the end wall 40. In very hot conditions,
the plastic material becomes noticeably softer, yet the
traction forces must be supported no less reliably. To
this end, not only is the end wall 40 made rigid by vir-
tue of the folded over flaps, but also a metal reinforc-
ing rod 64 is inserted bet~een the ribs of the material,just below the slot 46, to further strengthen and make
more rigid the abutment for the traction strap 44. The
rod 64 ensures that the traction forces are reliably
transmitted from the slot 46 into the sides 16, 18 of
the splint, whatever the conditions.
According to the invention, the splint is provided
with lateral folds 66, 68. Prior to use, the splint is made
ready for storage by folding it along the folds, which are
pre-creased for the purpose. The folds are double-creased
because the material is doubled back upon itself, i.e. is
folded through 180, and a single crease is rather too stiff
to allow an easy 180 bend. It has been found that even though
the splint may have been-stored folded for a prolonged period,
once the splint has been opened out, and then re-folded into
o the box-ended channel as described, the splint is virtually
,...
as strong and rigid as it would be if the folds 66, 68
were entirely absent. '
No splint of course can be allowed to endanger
the life of a patient by collapsing in use: a splint that has
to support femoral traction forces must be especially
carefully designed from this standpoint, since it has to
support the traction forces, and since it has to be long
enough to stretch from the groin area -to well past the
heel area on large or small patients.
The use of the extruded material described pro-
vides a highly satisfactory traction splint, even though
the material has been folded before use. The fact that it can
be folded means that the splint may be stored conveniently
especially in a pre-packed kit which contains the rest of
the equipment needed to deal with a femur injury, namely:
(a) leg padding, in-the form preferably ~f at least two 30 cm
by 80 cm ~ads of cotton; (b) two groin pads, in the form of
8 cm by 16 cm wads having a self~adhesive backing; (c) a foot
harness, fitted to (d) an outline of a foot, in cardboard,
to illustrate in a very easy-to-understand manner just how
the harness fits over the foot, the outline being discarded
when the harness is placed on the patient. The kit may be
pre-packed in a shrink-applied transparent plastic ilm.
As can be derived by scaling Fig. 1, the splint has
an overall length of 1.23 m and a width of 0.53 m. These,
and the rest of the dimensions of the splint were determined
empirically, and have been found to be suitable for a splint
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that fits a majority of people~ The splint is folded into
three, along the fold lines 66, 68, and the end 34 is tucked
in, to provide a folded area for storage, of 0.40 m by
0.53 m.
