HemaWipe® &
Hemaslide®...
HemaWipe and Hemaslide are registered
trademarks of
MedTek Diagnostics, Inc. who manufacture and sell
it. Colo-rectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death
in this country. A good way of screening for this illness, which
can be successfully treated in its early stages, is to look for
"occult", or hidden blood in the stools. The usual method of doing
this required the patient to fish around in a toilet bowl - or
worse, and the unpleasantness of this task prevented many people
from taking this test. Dr. Levine was aware that few of his
patients were returning their tests, so we developed a more
pleasant and accurate way of collecting the samples.
Everyone who goes to the bathroom
uses toilet paper, so we designed a flexible pad which is used in
place of toilet paper. The design of the disposable sample pad was
crucial, however, so that just the right amount of sample was
collected. It is very difficult to explain to someone just how much
is enough, and it was not uncommon for the standard test systems to
be returned with huge excesses of smelly stool. The problem was
made worse by the fact that the samples were returned by mail,
which led the post office to ban them from the mails unless they
were specially contained. Our invention solved all of these
problems.
After defecation, the patient uses the device to wipe the residual stool onto
the test area. This forces a metered quantity of stool through the holes in the
outer layer onto the test pad. The outer layer is then stripped off and flushed
down the toilet, leaving a series of small stool "dots", which are optimum for
testing. The removal of the outer layer also exposes an adhesive layer, so that
when the pad is folded, it becomes hermetically sealed and can be handled or
mailed without fear of odors or contamination. When the physician or laboratory
receives the device, an outer panel is removed, and reagents are added which
leach any occult blood from the stool and create a blue "starburst" pattern.
More information can be found in the Hemawipe patent.
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