Smiths Medical Asd, Inc.

Frederick P Zecha, Jr

Louis Woo

A needle protective housing is fitted to the neck of a medicament container, for example a glass vial, that has a circumferential notch formed at a proximal portion of the neck. The needle protective device has a needle protective housing pivotally connected to a cup-shaped collar. The collar has a base that is formed by a plurality of coplanar extensions, that in turn form an aperture that allows the base to be press-fitted onto the neck of the vial. The extensions are each separated by a space, so that the extensions would give way when the collar is slidedly fitted along the length of the neck of the vial, until the extensions reach the notch at the proximal end of the neck of the vial where the extensions return to the original shape to thereby couple the collar to the vial. The circular wall upraised from the base of the collar is internally threaded for accepting the luer of a needle assembly, when the needle assembly is mated to the neck of the syringe. Once fully threaded into the collar, the interaction of the luer and the base of the collar effects a tightly gripped fit of the base about the neck of the collar. Once the housing is pivoted to cover a contaminated needle, a lock mechanism at the housing would fixedly retain the needle. Once retained, the contaminated needle will continue to be retained within the housing even in the unlikely event that the collar and needle protective housing are forcibly removed from the vial.

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Keene, NH, United States of America

Frederick P Zecha, Jr