Ostomy openings cannot be controlled at will, and in many cases patients with such surgically made openings or incontinent urine discharge openings are provided with a bag or pouch to collect the discharge from the openings. Many such pouches are disposable, i.e. for use only once, and the invention is not concerned with disposable pouches. In many other cases, however, it is preferred to use a drainable pouch provided with a discharge opening through which the pouch is emptied at more or less regular intervals. Many such pouches have been described, i.e. in the patent literature. The invention may be used in connection with any such known type of reusable collecting pouches. They are always provided with an inlet opening for the bodily excretions and around the inlet opening or elsewhere there is some device adapted to affix the pouch to the body of the patient. Moreover, there is frequently a venting aperture provided with a deodorizing filter to as to prevent bulging of the pouch due to intestinal gases. As the invention is not concerned with any such detail, they will not be discussed further.
The discharge opening of drainable pouches of the kind in question may be a slit in one of the pouch walls or, more commonly, merely an interruption of the seam joining the pouch walls together. As the main portion of the pouch is normally fairly wide, e.g. some 10 to 20 cm, it is usual to place the discharge opening in a narrower bottom extension of the pouch, e.g. having a width of some 4 to 6 cm. Moreover, it is common practice to close the discharge opening between the emptyings of the pouch by a clip, part of the narrower bottom portion being folded one or a few bends back and around the clip, the ends of which are doubled back over the folds of the bottom portion of the pouch. By experience such closing of the pouches is quite reliable.
The clips in question are usually strips made of a flexible yet relatively rigid and substantially unelastic material and in principle are wellknown, e.g. as closure means for all kinds of bags, e.g. for groceries or kitchen waste. They are frequently made of some rather rigid cellulosic material such as carton, or of some plastic material, and they are often reinforced with one or more metal threads.
In some cases the buyers of such drainable pouches use loose, independent clips. As these are easily lost in the process of emptying and possibly rinsing the pouch, it has been customary to glue or otherwise permanently affix the clip to the pouch adjacent the discharge opening thereof.
However, this has the drawback that the clip and especially the narrow spaces and edge portions around it unavoidably become dirty during the emptying the pouch; and while the latter can be easily rinsed and cleaned because of the smoothness of the plastic sheet from which it is made, so is not the case with the clip and its immediate surroundings. The contamination of the clip and its close surroundings is unhygienic and unpleasant for the user, especially for patients with ileostomies and colostomies, for whom the problem is particularly pertinent. Moreover, it may render is difficult to keep the underwear clean.
From FIG. 3 of the German published patent application DE 33 25 299 Al (having priorities from U.S. applications Nos. 398,913 and 491,256 of July 10, 1982, and May 3, 1983, respectively) there is known an ostomy pouch of the general type here concerned, having a narrowed bottom portion with the discharge opening right at the bottom of the bottom portion. A short distance above the discharge opening the bottom portion is provided with two lateral extensions, each forming a small pocket. The ends of a closing clip fits into and are placed in these pockets whereas the entire intermediate portion of the clip is free and situated at one of the walls of the pouch. Thus, when emptying the pouch, part of the waste material to remove may easily come into the space between the clip and the pouch wall. This can be avoided by removing the clip from the two pockets but firstly that in itself is unpleasant and may involve a risk of losing the clip; and moreover, waste material may easily come into the pockets in question, and it will be very difficult to rinse said small pockets since they have a width of the order of, e.g., 6-12 mm.