Hand-held oral irrigating device

Abstract

An oral irrigator device is formed of an adapter mountable in interposed relation between a supply pipe of treatment liquid, generally water, and a shower head, a user-graspable handpiece, and a flexible liquid-communicating hose connecting the adapter and handpiece. A rotatable turbine within the adapter generates, from the continuous-flow stream of treatment liquid from the supply pipe, a pulsating stream of the liquid for delivery to the handpiece through a normalizing flow regulator and the flexible connecting hose. In the handpiece, the pulsating stream is separated into a primary stream for discharge through an appliance head carried on the handpiece and a secondary stream that is directed into an expansion chamber partially bounded by an elastic diaphragm which separates the chamber from a storage reservoir for a flowable medicament. As the expansion chamber fills with liquid from the secondary pulsatile stream, the diaphragm expands into the reservoir, thus applying pressure on the stored medicament which is ejected from the reservoir for mixture with the primary stream. The pressure of the primary stream is reduced relative to the secondary stream pressure so as to facilitate even mixing of the ejected medicament and primary pulsatile liquid streams.