Foley Catheter and Drainage Tube System with Integrated Check Valve and Flush Port

Sponsor

Carle Illinois College of Medicine: Neel Jani, Asad Rauf

Student Team

Master of Engineering: Mark Tarabey, Anjhana Venkataramanan
Undergraduates: Parth Shah, Abhishek Bhattacharjee, Will Walton
iMBA: Daniel Kim

Description

Preventing urinary reflux is therefore important in reducing intraluminal CAUTI’s in all patients with catheters. Preventing reflux may be especially important in dementia patients with long term catheters, who may have a hard time remembering the relative placement of the drainage bag to the bladder. The use of check valves (one-way valves) is common in hydraulics and fluid transport, but has not been widely adopted in urinary catheters. The following design incorporates the use of check valves to augment a urinary catheter and drainage tube system to optimally prevent urinary reflux into the bladder. As such, even if the drainage bag were to be lifted above the level of the bladder, the presence of a check valve would prevent the retrograde flow of urine back into the bladder and prevent a UTI. The goal of such a design would be to reduce the rate of intraluminal CAUTIs, as well as give nurses and caretakers a peace of mind when handling patients with urinary catheters.

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